Pratiksha K.

Therapeutic relationship is one of the most important aspects of therapy because without a relationship of trust and respect, disclosure on the part of the client is almost impossible. Carl Rogers focused largely on the 'therapeutic alliance' built between the client and the counselor however other theorists such as Freud did not believe in building this relationship. The initial stages of counseling deal with building this relationship so as to make the client more trusting of and comfortable with the counselor. It also makes the client aware that the counselor is a non-judgemental audience which further creates a safe atmosphere for self-disclosure.

Observation is a technique used to gather information from a sample. There are two types of observation- naturalistic and participant. Naturalistic Observation basically involves the researcher directly observing the behaviour in a natural environment, i.e. outside the laboratory and the observed population is not aware of the researcher's presence, nor that they are being observed. As opposed to this, in Participant Observation, the researcher is a participant in the environment and engages in the behaviour along with the others and at the same time, makes observations. The problem with these methods is that the type of data collected and the details observed depend largely on what the observer deems important. Thus, there is a large scope for observer bias. However, observation also helps to get more authentic data as first hand information is being recorded.