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Counselor educators and mental health counselors often have a lukewarm attitude toward counseling research and evidence-based practice. This attitude may be because of a perceived mismatch between evidence-based technical procedures and the relational orientation that most counselors value. To warm up mental health counselors' attitudes toward evidence-based research and practice, we propose a relationally oriented research agenda that focuses on integrating evidence-based relationship factors (EBRFs) into counselor training and practice. Eight EBRFs are defined and operationalized, and specific counselor behaviors are described. Reframing and refocusing counseling research on relational variables has the potential to support current counseling practices and inspire development of a counseling-specific research base. Recommendations for a rapprochement between counselor education research and mental health counseling practice are offered, including a list of brief measures that mental health counselors could introduce into their counseling practice.
Counselor educators have sometimes criticized the rigor of their own research training (Fong & Malone, 1994; Galassi, Stoltz, Brooks, & Trexler, 1987). In fact, David Kaplan (2009), former chief professional officer of the American Counseling Association, once proposed that counselor education programs discontinue empirical research pursuits. Kaplan (2009) noted that counselors and counseling students often have low interest in research, weak motivation to conduct research, and minimal research training. Counseling researchers have also lamented (a) the paucity of counselor education outcomes research (Ray et al., 2011) and (b) the lack of knowledge about evidencebased practice within the counselor education profession (Yates, 2013).
Given this context, it is not surprising that many practicing mental health counselors have ambivalent feelings toward research and a lukewarm attitude toward evidence-based practice. Additionally, mental health counselors may be less enthusiastic about evidence-based approaches because evidence-based approaches are often, as Hatchet (2017) noted, conflated with empirically supported technical procedures: "A strong emphasis on the counseling relationship is also more congruent with the philosophical underpinnings of the counseling profession than the EST [empirically supported treatment] medical model" (p. 111). Capuzzi and Stauffer (2016) also emphasized that professional counselors focus on therapeutic relationship as the vehicle through which "client change occurs" (p. 4).
The perspectives of Hatchet (2017) and Capuzzi and Stauffer (2016) are consistent with the opening words from the Vision 20/20 consensus definition of counseling: "Counseling is a professional relationship" (Kaplan, Tarvydas, &...