Kirsten Lind Seal, PhD, LMFT

Assistant Professor

STATISTICAL
TECHNIQUES AND
RESEARCH
METHODS IN MFT

Tonights Agenda

Introductions
Do we need this?
Worldview and paradigms in research
Definitions
How they work together
Syllabus/housekeeping

Introductions

Name
Where are you in the program?
Former careers/life experience
Family information that you would like to
share
Experiences with research?
What are you hoping to get out of this class?
What are your hopes for your future career
as an MFT?

Mecurrently

Kirsten
PhD from the University of Minnesota,
Twin Cities, Family Social Science
Department, Couple and Family
Therapy Specialization
Masters in Counseling Psychology with
a minor in Family Social Science from
the University of Minnesota

Clinical work
Private practice since 1.1.11
Clinical work with refugees in Spanish and

French at WalkIn Counseling Center 4 years

Co-Parenting classes at Headway Emotional
Services in Spanish and English
Womens group at El Centro (in Spanish)
Abbott Northwestern Movement Therapy
Adult Inpatient Groups
Fairview Riverside Child and Adolescent
Inpatient Unit

Researcher
Post Doc LGBTQ research trans youth
Marital First Responders training (dissertation research)
Family Education Diabetes Series
Father-daughter relationship (qualitative study)
How the arts heal arts work in trauma (Liberian group)
Couples and the New Business Venture
Publications
Dissertation published in Journal of Marital and Family Therapy
3 Chapters in textbook on Intimate Relationships
Web modules on Attachment
Qualitative Health Research on Diabetes and Native American

people
Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy

Teaching
Currently
Teaching MFT 690 all sections
Teaching MFT 620A Statistical Techniques and

Research Methods in MFT

Formerly
Contemporary Family Therapy Theories at UW Stout
MFT Ethics at St. Cloud State University

Training in pedagogy
St. Marys University Teaching Fellow 2013-2014
Preparing Future Faculty from University of Minnesota

What do we need research for?

We are therapists, not scientists

Why do we do research in MFT?

Take a minute to think about this

Turn to your neighbor and discuss for 3

minutes

Bring it back to the class

Time for a break10

minutes

The field of MFT

Masters level
80% work in clinical settings
Howeverwe need research to help us
understand what we know and what we
do not yet know

Some important
concepts

Ontology concerned with the nature of

reality
Materialist ontological position no ghosts

Epistemology what we can know about

reality (social behavior in this case) and
how we can know it
How do you discover/understand/test it?
Is there only one way of knowing? Or are there

many ways?

A quick way to think about this

What shall I study? RQ

Whom shall I study? Sample

How shall I study? Research method

A paradigm or worldview

How we see the world

Consists of a particular theoretical bent
It is the lens through which we explain
things for example, attachment theory
More complicated than quantitative and
qualitative but we will start here

What does it mean

To be a Research-informed clinician?

Research What is it?

Originates with a question/problem

Clear articulation of a goal
Divides principle problem into more
manageable steps (or sub-problems)
Guided by specific problem/question/hypothesis
Requires a specific plan/procedure
Relies on critical assumptions
Collection and interpretation of data to resolve
the problem/question
Cyclical

Statistics what are

they?

Thoughts?

Definition

The science that deals with the

collection, classification, analysis and
interpretation of numerical facts or data,
and that, by use of mathematical
theories of probability, imposes order or
regularity on aggregates of more or less
disparate elements
The numerical facts or data themselves

How do they work

together?

Statistics are one way of figuring out an

answer to a research question/problem

There are many other ways

You dont need to be able to produce

statistics in order to understand how
they work

Research Methods and Statistics

Research methods are guided by our

paradigm
If that paradigm is more positivist and
quantitative, then we will likely be using
statistics to answer our question

Three main ways of discovering

Qualitative
More subjective
Uses words not numbers as data

Quantitative
Uses numbers
Tests hypotheses

Mixed-methods
Uses both
More full and more difficult to do if you are actually

conducting research

One way to think about research

Now lets look at the

syllabus

Goal of this class:

Becoming a good and critical consumer

of research

Using it to inform your clinical practice

Maybe inspire you to go further later on

if that turns out to be part of your journey

So what might you be interested

in finding out?

Research autobiography due next week

Answer these two questions:

What is it you are interested in finding out?

What is the big question?

Why are you interested in doing this? What is
so important about this topic?

See you next week!