The Reporting of Therapist Sample Data in the Journal of Counseling Psychology Descriptors: Identification of selected characteristics of journal articles

Appropriate identification of research participants is critical to the science of psychology (American Psychological Association, 1994; Smith & Glass, 1987). Moreover, in the psychotherapy literature, adequate

5 information about research samples is necessary in order to determine to which clinical and therapist populations the results can be generalized (Hill, Nutt, & Jackson, 1994); furthermore, replications and extensions of studies, vital to counseling research (Hill,

10 1993), require comprehensive descriptions of research participants in previous studies. Finally, without consistent reporting of data in the use of aggregate studies (e.g., meta-analysis), little can be concluded about what variables matter (Smith & Glass, 1987).