McLeod (2003, pp 64-65) states that it is essential that a good survey
questionnaire includes questions that are relevant to the topic, and that clearly
provides the information that is required. The survey questionnaire needs to have
instructions and a covering letter that is neat, orderly, and easy to understand. The
layout and presentation must be orderly, well arranged and easy to complete; the
All of these guidelines were taken into account when designing the first survey
questionnaire to investigate the use and effectiveness of FOT when counselling
couples. A clear set of statements was formulated to which the participants could
simply answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Furthermore, there was space provided to write more if the respondents had more to say. In order to ensure a relatively high rate of return
of completed questionnaires, they were designed to take no longer than five
minutes to complete. They were sent as an attachment with the covering letter to
the participants.
The questionnaire was composed of seven questions. The first three
questions were designed to ascertain if focusing-oriented therapy was used or had
been used with couples by therapists. The next two questions referred to the
desirability of applying Focusing to couple therapy, and the final question was
concerned with the possibility of using Focusing for improving couple’s
relationships. The questions as presented in Figure 1 required a tick to be inserted
in the relevant box. At this stage, and in order to keep the questionnaire simple and
focused, there was no other participant information sought. Therefore, age, gender,
counselling orientation and years of experience were not noted here. Space was
provided on the questionnaire for willing participants to write their contact names
and addresses, if they chose to do so (Appendix 2). The letter sent by email to each
participant issued an invitation to take part in the research (Appendix 3). Its
purpose was to minimise any concerns or prejudices potential participants might
have had about the content of the research.
Figure 1. List of questions
•Have you used Focusing when counselling couples or when dealing with couple relationship issues?
•Do you use Focusing overtly as a therapeutic approach in your work with couples? •Do you work mostly with couple problems?
•If you used Focusing when you were counselling couples, was it effective? (If you want to say more please write it in the box)
•Do you think Focusing is appropriate in working with couples? •Have you taught Focusing to couples to improve their relationship?
Response rate
On receipt of the completed questionnaires, the quantitative data were
collated manually. The questionnaire was sent as an attachment by email to
focusing counsellors, mainly Focusing Institute members. Of the total number of
796 questionnaires sent out, there were 141 failed deliveries and 622 which were
not responded to. The total number of questionnaires responded to was 33. Some
reasons for this low level of response could be: (a) Recipients of the email may
have had difficulty opening the email attachment. There might have been a higher
response rate if I had sent the questionnaires by post (which would have been more
costly and time-consuming and with the added risk of letters getting lost in the
mail). (b) The recipients might have felt that they did not know me well enough to
respond. (c) Their own workload and schedules could have been very full already,
making it difficult for them to think of taking on anything else. (d) Among the
recipients, there might have been some people who would have preferred an open-
ended approach that they could have elaborated more on. (e) Some people might
have intended to respond when they would get time, but did not do so within the
deadline for submission. (f) The focusing counsellors might have felt that they did
not have enough experience working with couples to enable them to respond
effectively. (g) The fact that many members of the Focusing Institute are not
practicing therapists themselves might well have something to do with the low rate
of respondents.
The disappointingly low rate of questionnaire respondents brought me
face to face with a few good lessons. For example, it may be important to be well
known to the participant invitees in order to get their interested responses. There
was not very much I could have done about it, because I am from Asia and I am not
known in the United Kingdom. Also it would help if the researcher had adequate
is also an indication of the great need for further research and study on the use of
FOT in couple therapy. A chart system was used on which the data were carefully
ticked off in relation to the answers given. This was double checked for accuracy.
3.5 Part Two: The recordings of focusing process
Recordings were made of a number of focusing sessions which I made
with focusing-oriented and experiential therapy diploma students at the University
of East Anglia from 2006 to 2008 who had given their permission to be approached
about research matters. There were 11 students in 2006 and 8 students in 2007,
most of whom had already trained and practiced as counsellors. 6 out of 11
students in 2006 and 7 out of 8 students in 2007 gave their permission to record
their focusing session. Thus 13 sessions were recorded and nine of them were
transcribed (Apendix 24 to 32). Four recorded sessions were not transcribed due to
the poor quality of the recordings. Each recorded session took about 20 minutes.
Once the focusing-oriented sessions had been recorded, each recording was
transcribed verbatim and was anonymised. I listened to the recordings again and
again, and read through the transcripts several times. After several readings I felt I
was beginning to make some sense of the data. I had initially intended to conduct a
Framework Analysis (Ritchie & Spencer, 1994; Srivastava & Thomson, 2009) of
this data, but was in the end unable to find a satisfactory way of integrating such an
analysis with the rest of the thesis. Instead I used the data in a less formal way as a
means of grounding my theoretical knowledge of focusing, and as a source of
illustration of the focusing concepts discussed in Chapter 6.