Raabe, Vicky (2015) Negotiating Ambivalence in Motivational Interviewing: A Discursive Case Study. Honours thesis, University of Southern Queensland. (Unpublished)
Abstract
Motivational interviewing (MI) is a collaborative, person-centred form of counselling that aims to resolve a client’s ambivalence for behaviour change. MI focuses on the natural language of change occurring normally in conversation. Clinical research has focused on what should be done to resolve ambivalence and has overlooked how change language works in therapy to ‘naturally’ negotiate and resolve ambivalence. The current study explores this overlooked issue. It examines how ambivalence is introduced and negotiated by a client and the MI clinician in a MI session. Thus it examines how ambivalence is constructed and situated. A video recorded MI training session and its transcript was examined for all instances of ambivalence talk between the client and MI clinician. Seven extracts were selected from throughout the counselling session where ambivalence was the topic of therapy conversation. The properties of ambivalence were uncovered using discursive psychology and conversation analysis. Three broad findings were revealed. First, the client introduces the notion of ambivalence and constructs it as a simple contrast between two concurrent states or feelings. Second, the client and clinician jointly negotiate ambivalence to mean (a) a contrast between concurrent states, (b) where the client is stuck, (c) it’s the first step toward change, (d) it’s unpleasant, and (e) it includes arguments for changing alongside arguments for maintaining the status quo. Third, the clinician used his institutional identity to examine instances of change talk and neglected or overlooked instances of sustain talk. Thus there was an asymmetry to how ambivalence talk was resolved. These results show how a highly skilled MI clinician responds to a client’s ambivalence for change. This knowledge will help to identify what makes some MI clinicians more effective than others, and so can shape the nature of MI training programs in the future.
|
Statistics for this ePrint Item |
| Item Type: | Thesis (Non-Research) (Honours) |
|---|---|
| Item Status: | Live Archive |
| Additional Information: | Current UniSQ staff and students can request access to this thesis. Please email research.repository@unisq.edu.au with a subject line of SEAR thesis request and provide: Name of the thesis requested and Your name and UniSQ email address |
| Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: | Historic - Faculty of Health, Engineering and Sciences - School of Psychology and Counselling (1 Jan 2015 - 31 Dec 2021) |
| Supervisors: | Steve Christensen |
| Qualification: | Bachelor of Science (Honours) |
| Date Deposited: | 26 Aug 2025 01:35 |
| Last Modified: | 26 Aug 2025 01:35 |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | motivational interviewing, ambivalence, change talk, sustain talk, discursive psychology, conversation analysis |
| Fields of Research (2008): | 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 1799 Other Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 179999 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences not elsewhere classified |
| Fields of Research (2020): | 52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5299 Other psychology > 529999 Other psychology not elsewhere classified |
| URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/52681 |
Actions (login required)
 |
Archive Repository Staff Only |
