USING SOCIAL COGNITIVE CAREER THEORY TO CREATE AFFIRMATIVE LESBIAN, GAY, AND BISEXUAL RESEARCH TRAINING ENVIRONMENTS

Historically, counseling psychologists have conducted relatively few e mpirical studies addressing lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) issues. M ethodological challenges, hetero-sexism, and homophobia present partic ular challenges to facilitating such research. Moreover research sugge sts that graduate students receive little or no training about conduct ing LGB research. The authors examine social cognitive career theory ( Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994) to generate recommendations for creating research training environments that are affirming of LGB issues. Base d on this model, suggestions are offered to influence several aspects of the research training environment: distal and proximal environmenta l influences, individual variables, students' research self-efficacy b eliefs, and students' research outcome expectations. It is hoped that these recommendations will help to improve graduate training programs and to advance empirical knowledge about LGB issues in psychology.