Return to Faculy Bio

Constance T. Fischer Research

Dissertations directed:

Qualitative Research (empirical phenomenological):

• being in privacy
• rapport
• intimacy
• being criminally victimized
• becoming angry
• styles of living back injury (with Murphy)
• Empirical phenomenological research in psychotherapy: Duquesne dissertations (with Embree, Eckenrod, &Jarzynka)

Textbook: Qualitative Research Methods for Psychology: Introduction through Empirical Studies

Theoretical:

• Humanistic psychology and qualitative research
• Rigor in qualitative research: Reflexive and presentational
• Qualitative psychological research and individualized/collaborative psychological assessment
• Evolving guidelines for publication of qualitative research (with Elliott & Rennie)
• Designing qualitative research reports for publication (chapter)

Statistical Research:

• dynamic reading
• cheating levels
• social schemas
• Catholic college students' attitudes toward social change

Dissertations directed:
(primarily empirical-phenomenological, or e-p with additional methods)

• Imaginative activity of borderline personality (Barrows)
• Unipolar clinical depression (Carter)
• Despair (M. Goldsmith)
• Desistance from crime: Ex-inmates' narratives (Culley)
• A brain-damaged existence (Dunn)
• Narcissistic injury (G. Kashgarian)
• Persons' participation in allergic reaction (Moody)
• Living through the first three months poststroke (Jubala)
• Appropriation of the obese body in bypass patients (Moss)
• The living of back injury (Murphy)
• Living with the threat of breast cancer (Hesky)
• Mothers' transcending childs' violent death thru supporting others (Nouel)
• Caring for a spouse with Alzheimer's disease (Park)
• Disaster trauma: Phenomenologica-linquistic analysis of Buffalo Creek flood accounts (Hetherington)
• Transformation through the imagining phase of systematic desensitizaton (W.Ward)
• Trying-out different comportment through psychodrama (Hofricter)
• Perception's life in dialogue: psychoanalysts' conduct during interviews ( Sheridan )
• Dieting toward maintained weight loss (Jayson)
• Moving toward furthering intimacy (Donegan)
• Inhabited space in early childhood (Benswanger)
• Adolescent participation in an unprotected sexual encounter (Hamann)
• Married women's changing in the context of changing social possibilities (Journey)
• Psychospiritual development paths for women who have difficulty praying to masculine images of the divine (Mulrenin)
• Adolescents' experience of breaking connections with their mothers (Wulster-Butler)
• Procrastinating (Schnepp)
• Being impatient (D. Coufal)
• Being abandoned in a love relationship (Ott)
• Students' evolving impressions of professors (Guariello)
• Coherence of gesture in improvisational dance (Levi)
• The Rorschach Erlebnistypus (Kooser)
• Psychologist's experience during assessment interview (Churchill)
• Disclosing one's problem to an intake clinician (Joseph)

Dissertation proposals approved:

• Encountering a stranger experienced as threatening (Rusnack)
• Assessor and client experience of collaborative psychological assessment (Danna)
• The child's experience of removal from a nonoffending parenting in situations of parental violence (Byers)
• Impact of combat trauma on the veteran's family members (Grimesey)
• Ethical engagement in clinical practice: Interplay of code, theory, and personal responsibility (Bernstein)
• The role of psycho-analysis in the collected works of Hermann Rorschach (Duffy)

Dissertation proposals under way:

• The Rorschach ambitant response style (Cuello)
• The scoring and meaning of active and passive Rorschach responses (McElfresh)

Further research interest:

Adolescents' becoming angry