ABSTRACT
Professional counselors typically view themselves primarily as practitioners of applied behavioral sciences; their work is to help clients to resolve problems or to prevent future problems. Thus, the need for counselors’ time to be devoted to the direct service of helping others is usually viewed as urgent by supervisors, administrators, managers, clients, colleagues, and sometimes by counselors themselves. In contrast, conducting research is rarely viewed as urgent. However, research is extremely important for counselors. For one thing, research helps the entire counseling profession. Hadley and Mitchell (1995) wrote that:
Counseling exists as a profession partly because of the work of individuals who are recognized as both great researchers and great counselors. For example, we know of Carl Rogers, Donald Super, John Holland, and Virginia Satir not from their counseling activities alone but because they conducted research and published their findings. In the process, they changed the course of our profession. (p. 4)
