Research Design in Counseling

Book excerpt: This is the only text on research design written specifically for such courses in departments of counselor education and counseling psychology. Like most design texts, this book covers basic philosophical issues and the basic experimental designs; unlike most, it specifically and fully addresses the particular problems that confront counseling researchers. First, all the examples and illustrations are drawn from the counseling literature and are therefore more relevant for, and more inherently interesting to, counseling students. Second, it includes several chapters and sections that do not appear in other design texts, such as process research, analogue designs, and qualitative research. Finally, the book advocates a utilitarian rather than a hierarchical approach to analyzing design quality.