Journal of Counseling Psychology

In addition, the Journal of Counseling Psychology considers reviews or theoretical contributions that have the potential for stimulating further research in counseling psychology, and conceptual or empirical contributions about methodological issues in counseling psychology research.

The Journal of Counseling Psychology considers manuscripts that deal with clients who are not severely disturbed, who have problems with living, or who are experiencing developmental crises. Manuscripts that deal with the strengths or healthy aspects of more severely disturbed clients also are considered. The Journal of Counseling Psychology also considers manuscripts that focus on optimizing the potentials, accelerating the development, or enhancing the well-being of non-client populations.

Both quantitative and qualitative methods are appropriate. Extensions of previous studies, implications for public policy or social action, and counseling research and applications are encouraged.

Disclaimer: APA and the editors of Journal of Counseling Psychology assume no responsibility for statements and opinions advanced by the authors of its articles.

Equity, diversity, and inclusion

Journal of Counseling Psychology supports equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in its practices. More information on these initiatives is available under EDI Efforts.

Open science

The APA Journals Program is committed to publishing transparent, rigorous research; improving reproducibility in science; and aiding research discovery. Open science practices vary per editor discretion. View the initiatives implemented by this journal.

Editor’s Choice

Each issue of the Journal of Counseling Psychology will honor an article as the “Editor’s Choice”. Selection of the “Editor’s Choice” article is based on nominations by the associate editors. Selection criteria are having a large potential impact on the field of counseling psychology specifically and psychology generally and/or elevating an important future direction for scientific inquiry.

Author and editor spotlights

Explore journal highlights: free article summaries, editor interviews and editorials, journal awards, mentorship opportunities, and more.

Prior to submission, please carefully read and follow the submission guidelines detailed below. Manuscripts that do not conform to the submission guidelines may be returned without review.

Submission

The completion of a Manuscript Submission Checklist (PDF, 42KB) that signifies that authors have read this material and agree to adhere to the guidelines is now required. The checklist should follow the cover letter as part of the submission.

To submit to the editorial office of William Ming Liu, PhD, please submit manuscripts electronically through the Manuscript Submission Portal in Microsoft Word (.docx), or Open Office format or LaTex (.tex) as a zip file with an accompanied Portable Document Format (.pdf) of the manuscript file.

Prepare manuscripts according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association using the 7 th edition. Manuscripts may be copyedited for bias-free language (see Chapter 5 of the Publication Manual). APA Style and Grammar Guidelines for the 7 th edition are available.

General correspondence may be directed to:

William Ming Liu, PhD
Department of Counseling, Higher Education & Special Education
University of Maryland
3214 Benjamin Building
College Park, MD 20742
United States of America

General correspondence may be directed to the editorial office via email.

In addition to addresses, phone numbers, and the names of all coauthors, please supply electronic mail addresses and fax numbers of the corresponding author for potential use by the editorial office and later by the production office.

The Journal of Counseling Psychology ® is now using a software system to screen submitted content for similarity with other published content. The system compares the initial version of each submitted manuscript against a database of 40+ million scholarly documents, as well as content appearing on the open web. This allows APA to check submissions for potential overlap with material previously published in scholarly journals (e.g., lifted or republished material).

Manuscript details

The Journal of Counseling Psychology publishes theoretical, empirical, and methodological articles on multicultural aspects of counseling, counseling interventions, assessment, consultation, prevention, career development, and vocational psychology and features studies on the supervision and training of counselors.

Particular attention is given to empirical studies on the evaluation and application of counseling interventions and the applications of counseling with diverse and underrepresented populations.

Manuscripts should be concisely written in simple, unambiguous language, using bias-free language. Present material in logical order, starting with a statement of purpose and progressing through an analysis of evidence to conclusions and implications. The conclusions should be clearly related to the evidence presented.

Manuscript title

The manuscript title should be accurate, fully explanatory, and preferably no longer than 12 words.

Abstract

Manuscripts must be accompanied by an abstract of no more than 250 words. The abstract should clearly and concisely describe the hypotheses or research questions, research participants, and procedure. The abstract should not be used to present the rationale for the study, but instead should provide a summary of key research findings.

All results described in the abstract should accurately reflect findings reported in the body of the paper and should not characterize findings in stronger terms than the article. For example, hypotheses described in the body of the paper as having received mixed support should be summarized similarly in the abstract.

One double spaced line below the abstract, please provide up to five keywords as an aid to indexing.

Public significance statement

Authors submitting manuscripts to the Journal of Counseling Psychology are required to provide a short statement of one to two sentences to summarize the article's findings and significance to the educated public (e.g., understanding human thought, feeling, and behavior and/or assisting with solutions to psychological or societal problems). This description should be included within the manuscript on the abstract/keywords page.

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Journal of Counseling Psychology

Journal of Counseling Psychology is committed to improving equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in scientific research, in line with the APA Publishing EDI framework and APA’s trio of 2021 resolutions to address systemic racism in psychology.

The journal encourages submissions which extend beyond Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) samples (Henrich, et al., 2010). The journal welcomes submissions which feature Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and other marginalized communities. The journal particularly welcomes submissions which feature collaborative research models (e.g., community-based participatory research [CBPR]; see Collins, et al., 2018) and study designs that address heterogeneity within diverse samples.

The Journal of Counseling Psychology encourages authors to consider the ways in which power, justice, equity, marginalization, liberation, and healing are intertwined with people from diverse and thriving communities. Often, people from communities that have been (and continue to be) marginalized because of racism, anti-Blackness, sexism, classism, immigration-status, ageism, homophobia, ableism, heterosexism, transphobia, etc. and have had their ways of knowing and living minimized, erased, and not considered science or worthy of scholarship (epistemic exclusion) (Settles et al., 2021). As a journal, we encourage authors from these communities to submit studies, critical reviews, conceptualizations, and theorizations to challenge our foundational assumptions and advance our research. Additionally, we encourage authors to use theories like intersectionality to ground their use and interpretation of concepts and to examine systems and processes (i.e., racism not just race).

To promote a more equitable research and publication process, Journal of Counseling Psychology has adopted the following standards for inclusive research reporting.

Author contribution statements using CRediT

The APA Publication Manual (7th ed.) stipulates that “authorship encompasses…not only persons who do the writing but also those who have made substantial scientific contributions to a study.” In the spirit of transparency and openness, Journal of Counseling Psychology has adopted the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) to describe each author's individual contributions to the work. CRediT offers authors the opportunity to share an accurate and detailed description of their diverse contributions to a manuscript.

Submitting authors will be asked to identify the contributions of all authors at initial submission according to the CRediT taxonomy. If the manuscript is accepted for publication, the CRediT designations will be published as an author contributions statement in the author note of the final article. All authors should have reviewed and agreed to their individual contribution(s) before submission.

CRediT includes 14 contributor roles, as described below:

• Conceptualization: Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.
• Data curation: Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later re-use.
• Formal analysis: Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.
• Funding acquisition: Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.
• Investigation: Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection.
• Methodology: Development or design of methodology; creation of models.
• Project administration: Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.
• Resources: Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools.
• Software: Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.
• Supervision: Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.
• Validation: Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.
• Visualization: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation.
• Writing—original draft: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation).
• Writing—review & editing: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision—including pre- or post-publication stages.

Authors can claim credit for more than one contributor role, and the same role can be attributed to more than one author. Not all roles will be applicable to a particular scholarly work.

Masked review policy

This journal has adopted a policy of masked review for all submissions.

The cover letter should include all authors' names and institutional affiliations. Author notes providing this information should also appear at the bottom of the title page, which will be removed before the manuscript is sent for masked review.

Make every effort to see that the manuscript itself contains no clues to the authors' identity, including grant numbers, names of institutions providing IRB approval, self-citations, and links to online repositories for data, materials, code, or preregistrations (e.g., Create a View-only Link for a Project).

Cover letter

The cover letter accompanying the manuscript submission must include all authors' names and affiliations to avoid potential conflicts of interest in the review process. Provide addresses and phone numbers, as well as electronic mail addresses and fax numbers, if available, for all authors for use by the editorial office and later by the production office.

The cover letter must clearly state the order of authorship and confirm that this order corresponds to the authors' relative contributions to the research effort reported in the manuscript.

Fragmented (or piecemeal) publication involves dividing the report of a research project into multiple articles. In some circumstances, it may be appropriate to publish more than one report based on overlapping data. However, the authors of such manuscripts must inform the editor in the cover letter about any other previous publication or manuscript currently in review that is based—even in part—on data reported in the present manuscript.

Authors are obligated to inform the editor about the existence of other reports from the same research project in the cover letter accompanying the current submission. Manuscripts found to have violated this policy may be returned without review.

Length and style of manuscripts

Full-length manuscripts reporting results of a single quantitative study generally should not exceed 35 pages total (including cover page, abstract, text, references, tables, and figures), with margins of at least 1 inch on all sides and a standard font (e.g., Times New Roman) of 12 points (no smaller). The entire paper (text, references, tables, etc.) must be double spaced.

Reports of qualitative studies generally should not exceed 45 pages. For papers that exceed these page limits, authors must provide a rationale to justify the extended length in their cover letter (e.g., multiple studies are reported). Papers that do not conform to these guidelines may be returned with instructions to revise before a peer review is invited.

The Journal of Counseling Psychology encourages direct replications, preferably with an extension. Submissions should include “A Replication of XX Study” in the subtitle of the manuscript as well as in the abstract.

Brief reports

In addition to full-length manuscripts, the journal will consider brief reports. The brief reports format may be appropriate for empirically sound studies that are limited in scope, reports of preliminary findings that need further replication, or replications and extensions of prior published work.

Authors should indicate in the cover letter that they wish to have their manuscript considered as a brief report, and they must agree not to submit the full report to another journal.

The brief report should give a clear, condensed summary of the procedure of the study and as full an account of the results as space permits.

Brief reports are generally 20–25 pages in total length (including cover page, abstract, text, references, tables, and figures) and must follow the same format requirements as full-length manuscripts. Brief reports that exceed 25 pages will not be considered.

Manuscript preparation

Prepare manuscripts according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th or 7th edition). Manuscripts may be copyedited for bias-free language (see Chapter 3 of the 6th edition or Chapter 5 of the 7th edition).

Double-space all copy. Other formatting instructions, as well as instructions on preparing tables, figures, references, metrics, and abstracts, appear in the Manual. Additional guidance on APA Style is available on the APA Style website.

Below are additional instructions regarding the preparation of display equations, computer code, and tables.

Display equations

We strongly encourage you to use MathType (third-party software) or Equation Editor 3.0 (built into pre-2007 versions of Word) to construct your equations, rather than the equation support that is built into Word 2007 and Word 2010. Equations composed with the built-in Word 2007/Word 2010 equation support are converted to low-resolution graphics when they enter the production process and must be rekeyed by the typesetter, which may introduce errors.

To construct your equations with MathType or Equation Editor 3.0:

• Go to the Text section of the Insert tab and select Object.
• Select MathType or Equation Editor 3.0 in the drop-down menu.

If you have an equation that has already been produced using Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010 and you have access to the full version of MathType 6.5 or later, you can convert this equation to MathType by clicking on MathType Insert Equation. Copy the equation from Microsoft Word and paste it into the MathType box. Verify that your equation is correct, click File, and then click Update. Your equation has now been inserted into your Word file as a MathType Equation.

Use Equation Editor 3.0 or MathType only for equations or for formulas that cannot be produced as Word text using the Times or Symbol font.

Computer code

Because altering computer code in any way (e.g., indents, line spacing, line breaks, page breaks) during the typesetting process could alter its meaning, we treat computer code differently from the rest of your article in our production process. To that end, we request separate files for computer code.

In online supplemental material

We request that runnable source code be included as supplemental material to the article. For more information, visit Supplementing Your Article With Online Material.

In the text of the article

If you would like to include code in the text of your published manuscript, please submit a separate file with your code exactly as you want it to appear, using Courier New font with a type size of 8 points. We will make an image of each segment of code in your article that exceeds 40 characters in length. (Shorter snippets of code that appear in text will be typeset in Courier New and run in with the rest of the text.) If an appendix contains a mix of code and explanatory text, please submit a file that contains the entire appendix, with the code keyed in 8-point Courier New.

Tables

Use Word's insert table function when you create tables. Using spaces or tabs in your table will create problems when the table is typeset and may result in errors.

Academic writing and English language editing services

Authors who feel that their manuscript may benefit from additional academic writing or language editing support prior to submission are encouraged to seek out such services at their host institutions, engage with colleagues and subject matter experts, and/or consider several vendors that offer discounts to APA authors.

Please note that APA does not endorse or take responsibility for the service providers listed. It is strictly a referral service.

Use of such service is not mandatory for publication in an APA journal. Use of one or more of these services does not guarantee selection for peer review, manuscript acceptance, or preference for publication in any APA journal.

Submitting supplemental materials

APA can place supplemental materials online, available via the published article in the PsycArticles ® database. Please see Supplementing Your Article With Online Material for more details.

References

List references in alphabetical order. Each listed reference should be cited in text, and each text citation should be listed in the references section.

Examples of basic reference formats:

Journal article

McCauley, S. M., & Christiansen, M. H. (2019). Language learning as language use: A cross-linguistic model of child language development. Psychological Review, 126(1), 1–51. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000126

Authored book

Brown, L. S. (2018). Feminist therapy (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000092-000

Chapter in an edited book

Balsam, K. F., Martell, C. R., Jones. K. P., & Safren, S. A. (2019). Affirmative cognitive behavior therapy with sexual and gender minority people. In G. Y. Iwamasa & P. A. Hays (Eds.), Culturally responsive cognitive behavior therapy: Practice and supervision (2nd ed., pp. 287–314). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000119-012

Data set citation

Alegria, M., Jackson, J. S., Kessler, R. C., & Takeuchi, D. (2016). Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (CPES), 2001–2003 [Data set]. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR20240.v8

Software/Code citation

Viechtbauer, W. (2010). Conducting meta-analyses in R with the metafor package. Journal of Statistical Software, 36(3), 1–48. https://www.jstatsoft.org/v36/i03/

Wickham, H. et al., (2019). Welcome to the tidyverse. Journal of Open Source Software, 4(43), 1686, https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.01686

All data, program code and other methods must be appropriately cited in the text and listed in the references section.

Figures

Preferred formats for graphics files are TIFF and JPG, and preferred format for vector-based files is EPS. Graphics downloaded or saved from web pages are not acceptable for publication. Multipanel figures (i.e., figures with parts labeled a, b, c, d, etc.) should be assembled into one file. When possible, please place symbol legends below the figure instead of to the side.

Resolution

• All color line art and halftones: 300 DPI
• Black and white line tone and gray halftone images: 600 DPI

Line weights

• Adobe Photoshop images
  • Color (RGB, CMYK) images: 2 pixels
  • Grayscale images: 4 pixels
  • Stroke weight: 0.5 points

  APA offers authors the option to publish their figures online in color without the costs associated with print publication of color figures.

  The same caption will appear on both the online (color) and print (black and white) versions. To ensure that the figure can be understood in both formats, authors should add alternative wording (e.g., “the red (dark gray) bars represent”) as needed.

  For authors who prefer their figures to be published in color both in print and online, original color figures can be printed in color at the editor's and publisher's discretion provided the author agrees to pay:

  • $900 for one figure
  • An additional $600 for the second figure
  • An additional $450 for each subsequent figure

  Journal Article Reporting Standards

  Authors should review to the APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) for quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. The standards offer ways to improve transparency in reporting to ensure that readers have the information necessary to evaluate the quality of the research and to facilitate collaboration and replication.

  • Recommend the division of hypotheses, analyses, and conclusions into primary, secondary, and exploratory groupings to allow for a full understanding of quantitative analyses presented in a manuscript and to enhance reproducibility;
  • Offer modules for authors reporting on replications, clinical trials, longitudinal studies, and observational studies, as well as the analytic methods of structural equation modeling and Bayesian analysis;
  • Include guidelines on reporting of study preregistration (including making protocols public); participant characteristics (including demographic characteristics); inclusion and exclusion criteria); psychometric characteristics of outcome measures and other variables; and planned data diagnostics and analytic strategy.

  The guidelines focus on transparency in methods reporting, recommending descriptions of how the researcher’s own perspective affected the study, as well as the contexts in which the research and analysis took place.

  Transparency and openness

  APA endorses the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines by a community working group in conjunction with the Center for Open Science (Nosek et al. 2015). Effective July 1, 2021, empirical research, including meta-analyses, submitted to the Journal of Counseling Psychology must meet the “disclosure” level for all eight aspects of research planning and reporting. Authors should include a subsection in the Method section titled “Transparency and Openness.” This subsection should detail the efforts the authors have made to comply with the TOP guidelines. For example:

  • We report how we determined our sample size, all data exclusions (if any), all manipulations, and all measures in the study, and we follow JARS (Kazak, 2018). All data, analysis code, and research materials are available at [stable link to repository]. Data were analyzed using R, version 4.0.0 (R Core Team, 2020) and the package ggplot, version 3.2.1 (Wickham, 2016). This study’s design and its analysis were not pre-registered.

  Links to preregistrations and data, code, and materials should also be included in the author note.

  Data, materials, and code

  Authors must state whether data and study materials are available and, if so, where to access them. Recommended repositories include APA’s repository on the Open Science Framework (OSF), or authors can access a full list of other recommended repositories.

  In both the author note and at the end of the method section, specify whether and where the data and material will be available or include a statement noting that they are not available. For submissions with quantitative or simulation analytic methods, state whether the study analysis code is available, and, if so, where to access it.

  • All data have been made publicly available at the [repository name] and can be accessed at [persistent URL or DOI].
  • Materials and analysis code for this study are available by emailing the corresponding author.
  • Materials and analysis code for this study are not available.
  • The code behind this analysis/simulation has been made publicly available at the [repository name] and can be accessed at [persistent URL or DOI].

  Preregistration of studies and analysis plans

  Preregistration of studies and specific hypotheses can be a useful tool for making strong theoretical claims. Likewise, preregistration of analysis plans can be useful for distinguishing confirmatory and exploratory analyses. Investigators are encouraged to preregister their studies and analysis plans prior to conducting the research (e.g., ClinicalTrials.gov or the Preregistration for Quantitative Research in Psychology template) via a publicly accessible registry system (e.g., OSF, ClinicalTrials.gov, or other trial registries in the WHO Registry Network).

  Articles must state whether or not any work was preregistered and, if so, where to access the preregistration. If any aspect of the study is preregistered, include the registry link in the method section and the author note.

  • This study’s design was preregistered; see [STABLE LINK OR DOI].
  • This study’s design and hypotheses were preregistered; see [STABLE LINK OR DOI].
  • This study’s analysis plan was preregistered; see [STABLE LINK OR DOI].
  • This study was not preregistered.

  Permissions

  Authors of accepted papers must obtain and provide to the editor on final acceptance all necessary permissions to reproduce in print and electronic form any copyrighted work, including test materials (or portions thereof), photographs, and other graphic images (including those used as stimuli in experiments).

  On advice of counsel, APA may decline to publish any image whose copyright status is unknown.

  Publication policies

  For full details on publication policies, including use of Artificial Intelligence tools, please see APA Publishing Policies.

  APA policy prohibits an author from submitting the same manuscript for concurrent consideration by two or more publications.

  APA requires authors to reveal any possible conflict of interest in the conduct and reporting of research (e.g., financial interests in a test or procedure, funding by pharmaceutical companies for drug research).

  In light of changing patterns of scientific knowledge dissemination, APA requires authors to provide information on prior dissemination of the data and narrative interpretations of the data/research appearing in the manuscript (e.g., if some or all were presented at a conference or meeting, posted on a listserv, shared on a website, including academic social networks like ResearchGate, etc.). This information (2–4 sentences) must be provided as part of the author note.

  Ethical Principles

  It is a violation of APA Ethical Principles to publish "as original data, data that have been previously published" (Standard 8.13).

  In addition, APA Ethical Principles specify that "after research results are published, psychologists do not withhold the data on which their conclusions are based from other competent professionals who seek to verify the substantive claims through reanalysis and who intend to use such data only for that purpose, provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and unless legal rights concerning proprietary data preclude their release" (Standard 8.14).

  APA expects authors to adhere to these standards. Specifically, APA expects authors to have their data available throughout the editorial review process and for at least 5 years after the date of publication.

  Authors are required to state in writing that they have complied with APA ethical standards in the treatment of their sample, human or animal, or to describe the details of treatment.

  The APA Ethics Office provides the full Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct electronically on its website in HTML, PDF, and Word format. You may also request a copy by emailing or calling the APA Ethics Office (202-336-5930). You may also read "Ethical Principles," December 1992, American Psychologist, Vol. 47, pp. 1597–1611.

  Other information

  See APA’s Publishing Policies page for more information on publication policies, including information on author contributorship and responsibilities of authors, author name changes after publication, the use of generative artificial intelligence, funder information and conflict-of-interest disclosures, duplicate publication, data publication and reuse, and preprints.

  Visit the Journals Publishing Resource Center for more resources for writing, reviewing, and editing articles for publishing in APA journals.

  Editorial Board

  Editor

  William Ming Liu, PhD
  University of Maryland, College Park, United States

  Associate editors

  Germán A. Cadenas, PhD
  Rutgers University New Brunswick, United States

  Cirleen DeBlaere, PhD
  Georgia State University, United States

  Lisa Y. Flores, PhD
  University of Missouri, Columbia, United States

  Candice Nicole Hargons, PhD
  Emory University, Atlanta, United States

  Matthew J. Miller, PhD
  Loyola University Chicago, United States

  Brandon L. Velez, PhD
  Teachers College, Columbia University, United States

  Editorial fellows

  Nuha Alshabani, PhD
  Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, United States

  Whitney J. Erby, PhD
  Teachers College, Columbia University, United States

  Kiet D. Huynh, PhD
  University of North Texas, United States

  Vivian L. Tamkin, PhD
  Santa Clara University, United States

  Consulting editors

  Roberto L. Abreu, PhD
  University of Florida, United States

  Hector Y. Adames, PsyD
  The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, United States

  Alexis V. Arczynski, PhD
  University of La Verne, United States

  Dana Atzil-Slonim, PhD
  Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel

  Kim A. Baranowski, PhD, ABPP
  Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai, United States

  Eran Bar-Kalifa, PhD
  Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

  Theodore T. Bartholomew, PhD
  Scripps College, United States

  Samuel T. Beasley, PhD
  Western Michigan University, United States

  Margit I. Berman, PhD, LP
  Augsburg University, Minneapolis, United States

  Klaus E. Cavalhieri, PhD
  University of Albany, State University of New York, United States

  Norah Chapman, PhD
  Spalding University, United States

  Collette Chapman-Hillard, PhD
  University of Georgia, United States

  Na-Yeun Choi, PhD
  Dankook University, United States

  Tsz-yeung Harold Chui, PhD
  Chinese University of Hong Kong, China

  Ayşe Çiftçi, PhD
  Arizona State University, United States

  Noah M. Collins, PhD
  University of Maryland, College Park, United States

  Andres Consoli
  University of California, Santa Barbara, United States

  Marilyn A. Cornish, PhD
  Auburn University, United States

  Maria Teresa Coutinho, PhD
  Boston University, United States

  Alice E. Coyne
  Case Western Reserve University, United States

  Don E. Davis, PhD
  Georgia State University, United States

  Joanna M. Drinane, PhD
  University of Utah, United States

  Melissa M. Ertl, PhD
  University of Minnesota, United States

  Anna Kawennison Fetter, PhD
  The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States

  Jillian Fish, PhD
  Macalester College, United States

  Keri A. Frantell, PhD
  University of North Dakota, United States

  Kirsten A. Gonzalez, PhD
  University of Tennessee, Knoxville, United States

  Carlton E. Green
  Green Psychological Services, United States

  Joseph H. Hammer, PhD
  University of Kentucky, United States

  Erin E. Hardin, PhD
  University of Tennessee, Knoxville, United States

  Joshua N. Hook, PhD
  University of North Texas, United States

  Evelyn A. Hunter, PhD
  Auburn University, United States

  Neeta Kantamneni, PhD
  University of Nebraska, Lincoln, United States

  Brian T.H. Keum, PhD
  Boston College, United States

  Bryan S. K. Kim, PhD
  University of Hawai‘i, Hilo, United States

  Dennis Martin Kivlighan III, PhD
  University of Iowa, United States

  Debbiesiu Lee, PhD
  University of Miami, United States

  Tyler Lefevor, PhD
  Utah State University, United States

  Robert W. Lent, PhD
  University of Maryland, United States

  Jioni A. Lewis, PhD
  University of Maryland, College Park, United States

  Xu Li, PhD
  University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, United States

  Yun Lu, PhD
  Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

  P. Priscilla Lui, PhD
  University of Washington, United States

  Em Matsuno, PhD
  Arizona State University, United States

  Laurie Lali Dawn McCubbin, PhD
  University of Kentucky, United States

  Caitlin M. Mercier, PhD
  Illinois State University, United States

  Joseph R. Miles, PhD
  University of Tennessee, Knoxville, United States

  Della Mosely
  WELLS Healing Center, United States

  Rachel L. Navarro, PhD
  University of North Dakota, United States

  Viann Nguyen-Feng, PhD, MPH
  University of Minnesota, Duluth, United States

  Rhea L. Owens, PhD
  University of Minnesota, Duluth, United States

  Jill D. Paquin, PhD
  Chatham University, United States

  Mike C. Parent, PhD
  University of Texas, Austin, United States

  Andrés E. Pérez-Rojas, PhD
  Indiana University, United States

  Kristin M. Perrone, PhD
  Ball State University, United States

  Trisha L. Raque, PhD
  University of Denver, United States

  Delida Sanchez, PhD
  University of Maryland, College Park, United States

  Francisco J. Sánchez, PhD
  Arizona State University, United States

  Hung-Bin Sheu, PhD
  University at Albany, State University of New York, United States

  Richard Q. Shin, PhD
  University of Maryland, College Park, United States

  Steven Stone-Sabali, PhD
  Ohio State University, United States

  Han Na Suh, PhD
  Georgia State University, United States

  Karen W. Tao, PhD
  University of Utah, United States

  Alexander K. Tatum, PhD
  Ball State University, United States

  Elliot A. Tebbe, PhD
  University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States

  Femina P. Varghese, PhD
  University of Central Arkansas, United States

  Laurel B. Watson, PhD
  University of Missouri, Kansas City, United States

  Melanie M. Wilcox, PhD, ABPP
  Augusta University, United States

  Joel Wong, PhD
  Indiana University, Bloomington, United States

  Peer review coordinator

  Lorie Van Olst
  American Psychological Association, United States

  Abstracting & Indexing

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  Special Issues
  • New Approaches to Exploring Processes of Change in Counseling Psychology: Special issue of the APA's Journal of Counseling Psychology, Vol. 67, No. 4, July 2020. This special issue seeks to serve as a sourcebook for implementing a given approach in counseling research, in such areas as the assessment of coregulation processes, language processing, physiology, motion synchrony, event-related potentials, hormonal measures, and sociometric signals captured by a badge.
  Open Science

  Transparency and Openness Promotion

  APA endorses the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines by a community working group in conjunction with the Center for Open Science (Nosek et al. 2015). The TOP Guidelines cover eight fundamental aspects of research planning and reporting that can be followed by journals and authors at three levels of compliance.

  • Level 1: Disclosure—The article must disclose whether or not the materials are available.
  • Level 2: Requirement—The article must share materials when legally and ethically permitted (or disclose the legal and/or ethical restriction when not permitted).
  • Level 3: Verification—A third party must verify that the standard is met.

  As of July 1, 2021, empirical research, including meta-analyses, submitted to the Journal of Counseling Psychology must meet the “disclosure” level (Level 1) for all eight aspects of research planning and reporting. Authors should include a subsection in the method section titled “Transparency and openness.” This subsection should detail the efforts the authors have made to comply with the TOP Guidelines.

  The list below summarizes the minimal TOP requirements of the journal. Please refer to the Center for Open Science TOP guidelines for details, and contact the editor (Dennis M. Kivlighan, Jr., PhD) with any further questions. APA recommends sharing data, materials, and code via trusted repositories (e.g., APA’s repository on the Open Science Framework (OSF)), and we encourage investigators to preregister their studies and analysis plans prior to conducting the research. There are many available preregistration forms (e.g., the APA Preregistration for Quantitative Research in Psychology template, ClininalTrials.gov, or other preregistration templates available via OSF). Completed preregistration forms should be posted on a publicly accessible registry system (e.g., OSF, ClinicalTrials.gov, or other trial registries in the WHO Registry Network).

  A list of participating journals is also available from APA.

  The following list presents the eight fundamental aspects of research planning and reporting, the TOP level required by the Journal of Counseling Psychology, and a brief description of the journal's policy.

  • Citation: Level 1, Disclosure—All data, program code, and other methods developed by others should be appropriately cited in the text and listed in the references section.
  • Data Transparency: Level 1, Disclosure—Article states whether the raw and/or processed data on which study conclusions are based are available and, if so, where to access them.
  • Analytic Methods (Code) Transparency: Level 1, Disclosure—Article states whether computer code or syntax needed to reproduce analyses in an article is available and, if so, where to access it.
  • Research Materials Transparency: Level 1, Disclosure—Article states whether materials described in the method section are available and, if so, where to access them.
  • Design and Analysis Transparency (Reporting Standards): Level 1, Disclosure—The journal strongly encourages the use of APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards ([JARS-Quant, JARS-Qual, and/or MARS]).
  • Study Preregistration: Level 1, Disclosure—Article states whether the study design and (if applicable) hypotheses of any of the work reported was preregistered and, if so, where to access it. Authors may submit a masked copy via stable link or supplemental material or may provide a link after acceptance.
  • Analysis Plan Preregistration: Level 1, Disclosure—Article states whether any of the work reported preregistered an analysis plan and, if so, where to access it. Authors may submit a masked copy via stable link or supplemental material or may provide a link after acceptance.

  Other open science initiatives

  • Open Science badges: Not offered
  • Public significance statements: Offered
  • Author contribution statements using CRediT: Not required
  • Registered Reports: Not published
  • Replications: Published
  EDI Efforts

  Journal equity, diversity, and inclusion statement

  Journal of Counseling Psychology is committed to improving equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in scientific research, in line with the APA Publishing EDI framework and APA’s trio of 2021 resolutions to address systemic racism in psychology.

  The journal encourages submissions which extend beyond Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) samples (Henrich, et al., 2010). The journal welcomes submissions which feature Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and other marginalized communities. The journal particularly welcomes submissions which feature collaborative research models (e.g., community-based participatory research [CBPR]; see Collins, et al., 2018) and study designs that address heterogeneity within diverse samples.

  The Journal of Counseling Psychology encourages authors to consider the ways in which power, justice, equity, marginalization, liberation, and healing are intertwined with people from diverse and thriving communities. Often, people from communities that have been (and continue to be) marginalized because of racism, anti-Blackness, sexism, classism, immigration-status, ageism, homophobia, ableism, heterosexism, transphobia, etc. and have had their ways of knowing and living minimized, erased, and not considered science or worthy of scholarship (epistemic exclusion) (Settles et al., 2021). As a journal, we encourage authors from these communities to submit studies, critical reviews, conceptualizations, and theorizations to challenge our foundational assumptions and advance our research. Additionally, we encourage authors to use theories like intersectionality to ground their use and interpretation of concepts and to examine systems and processes (i.e., racism not just race).

  To promote a more equitable research and publication process, Journal of Counseling Psychology has adopted the following standards for inclusive research reporting.

  Inclusive study designs

  • Diverse samples

  Definitions and further details on inclusive study designs are available on the Journals EDI homepage.

  Inclusive reporting standards

  • Bias-free language and community-driven language guidelines (required)
  • Author contribution roles using CRediT (required)
  • Reflexivity (recommended)
  • Positionality statements (recommended)
  • Data sharing and data availability statements (recommended)
  • Impact statements (required)
  • Sample justifications (recommended)
  • Constraints on Generality (COG) statements (recommended)
  • Inclusive reference lists (recommended)

  More information on this journal’s reporting standards is listed under the submission guidelines tab.

  Pathways to authorship and editorship

  Editorial fellowships

  Editorial fellowships help early-career psychologists gain firsthand experience in scholarly publishing and editorial leadership roles. This journal offers an editorial fellowship program for early-career psychologists from historically excluded communities.

  Reviewer mentorship program

  This journal encourages reviewers to submit co-reviews with their students and trainees. The journal likewise offers a formal reviewer mentorship program where graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from historically excluded groups are matched with a senior reviewer to produce an integrated review.

  Other EDI offerings

  ORCID reviewer recognition

  Open Research and Contributor ID (ORCID) Reviewer Recognition provides a visible and verifiable way for journals to publicly credit reviewers without compromising the confidentiality of the peer-review process. This journal has implemented the ORCID Reviewer Recognition feature in Editorial Manager, meaning that reviewers can be recognized for their contributions to the peer-review process.

  Masked peer review

  This journal offers masked peer review (where both the authors’ and reviewers’ identities are not known to the other). Research has shown that masked peer review can help reduce implicit bias against traditionally female names or early-career scientists with smaller publication records (Budden et al., 2008; Darling, 2015).

  Author and Editor Spotlights

  Announcements

  Editor Spotlight