Julia McLeod, Lecturer in Counselling, Abertay University, Dundee

Over the last few weeks, there’s been a lot of activity going on behind the scenes to create an online therapist survey on pluralistic practice. The survey has now been published, and is open until the 8^th June 2020. You can access the survey here (or via the link https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/FuturePluralistic)

We would be really appreciate it if you could complete the survey. It takes about 30-45 minutes. It would also be great if you could forward the link to any colleagues who might be interested. The aim is to learn about the views and experiences, not only of people who identify as pluralistic, but also those who use a collaborative approach, see themselves as integrative, or are open to shared decision-making and responsiveness to client preferences.

The main purpose of the survey is to collect information that will feed in to the pluralistic community in terms of suggestions about what might be helpful, at this stage, to move things forward. The survey includes questions on such areas as whether more needs to be done to publicise pluralistic therapy, establish standards, create better support networks, and/or carry out more research. The survey includes open comment boxes where you can make your own suggestions.

Another aim of the survey is to contribute to the broader recognition of pluralistic therapy within the profession as a whole. The intention is to publish an article based on the survey in a leading international journal (for instance, the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration). The survey includes similar/same questions as previous surveys of therapists so there are many points of comparison that can be made. The survey includes a lot of questions on where pluralistic therapists (and those open to pluralistic ideas) work, the kind of clients being seen, and the kinds of interventions/methods that are used. Hopefully, the survey, in itself, will invite people to become more aware of pluralistic ideas, and motivate them to visit this site (there are several mentions of the pluralistic website in the survey). Invitations to complete the survey have been sent out to contacts in many countries.

The work on creating the survey has involved many people within the pluralistic practice network, who have suggested questions and commented on drafts of the questionnaire. My own institution, Abertay University, has always supported the development of pluralistic therapy and is keen to help us to collect evidence for its national and international impact. As well as the university paying for hosting the survey platform, we have been able to draw on advice and technical expertise from psychology colleagues in the university who have a lot of experience of on-line survey research methods.

Analysis of the survey data should be completed by the end of June 2020, and I hope to be able to write another blog in July with an indication of what has been found.