Addiction Studies: Exploring Students' Attitudes Toward Research in a Graduate Program‪.‬

The scientist-practitioner (S-P) model or "Boulder model" of training has served as the backbone of counseling psychology doctoral programs in the United States for nearly six decades. Ideally, science-practitioners should be able to apply psychological knowledge to their therapeutic work with clients (Jones, & Mehr, 2007). Research and practice should be synthesized into an integrated way of working which will be expressed in practice by employing a scientific approach (Spengler et al., 1995; Jones, & Mehr, 2007). Gelso and Lent (2000), offered the following synopsis: "Ultimately, ... our science and practice will be enhanced by helping our students learn how scholarly work can be done in the context of practice and practice settings" (p. 135). Over the years, leaders in the field have echoed this call by asserting that further integration of science and practice is needed to strengthen counseling psychology (e.g., Heppner, et al., 1992; Heppner, Casas, Carter, & Stone, 2000; Kahn & Gelso, 1997). Despite the proliferation of research on the S-P model in counseling psychology programs, a lack of investigation in addiction counselor training programs prevails. Part of this may be explained by the sheer numbers of psychology counseling programs as compared to addiction preparatory programs, as well as the underlying structure of addiction counseling. Many addiction counselors are recovering themselves, and historically, the pattern of training and treatment approaches were based on the disease model and 12-step ideology. As such, addiction counselors have been reticent to utilize evidence-based practices and treatments in a formal manner, citing their belief in outdated, empirically flawed methodology. A gap has been noted between what has been shown to be promising in the addiction literature and what is traditionally practiced by clinicians (Hodgson, 1994; Miller, Brown, et al., 1995; Miller & Carroll, 2006; Miller & Hester, 1986).