Ethical Considerations in Researching Counsellor Trainees’ Experiences
Ruhani Mat Min

Abstract
The main purpose of this qualitative research is to explore how the counsellor trainees organized their world, emotion, thoughts, and perceptions while performing counselling practicum during their training. Ten counsellor trainees participated in this study, and their stories were gathered through a series of interviews, written documents and observation. The data also included field notes of the researcher and review of the related documents. In order to get close to their experiences and to understand their experiences, the researcher must have direct contact and close relationships with the research participants and context of the study. A close relationship between a research participant and researcher promotes sustainability of research participant. In doing this, the idea of Bond (2000) about six ethical principles, which include autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, fidelity and self-interest, serves as a guideline. Sustaining research participants involves an ethical relationship between a research participant and researcher. Being able to understand goals of the research and the purpose of data, contributes to commitment of the research participants during the data gathering stage. Despite this, issues on sufficient information and informed consent are challenges experienced by researcher in recruiting as well as sustaining research participants. Despite those challenges, relationship between researcher and research participants are able to sustain through the period of gathering data, which explain about ethical relationship between those parties.

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