Aims and scope
Counseling Outcome Research and Evaluation (CORE) provides counselor educators, researchers, educators, and other mental health practitioners with outcome research and program evaluation practices for work with individuals across the lifespan. It addresses topics such as treatment efficacy, program impacts, clinical diagnostic practices, research and evaluation designs, and outcome measure reviews. This journal also serves to address ethical, legal, and cultural concerns in the assessment of dependent variables, implementation of clinical interventions, and outcome research. Manuscripts typically fall into one of the following categories:

Counseling Outcome Research: Treatment efficacy and effectiveness of mental health, school, addictions, rehabilitation, family, and college counseling interventions across the lifespan as reported in clinical trials, single-case research designs, single-group designs, and multi- or mixed-method designs.

Outcome-Based Program Evaluation: Evaluation practices across counseling settings, program development and process evaluations, quantitative, qualitative, and multi- or mixed-method outcome evaluations, evaluation methodology, evaluation ethics, interdisciplinary evaluations, cultural issues in program evaluations.

Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: Qualitative and quantitative syntheses of outcome research featuring estimations of treatment effectiveness, characteristics that moderate outcomes, and implications for public policy. Reliability and validity generalization studies.

Outcome-Based Diagnostic Practices: Reports and evaluations of diagnostic practices and processes in clinical settings, particularly in reference to differential diagnosis, dual diagnosis issues, incidence and prevalence of clinical diagnoses. Reports of broader impacts of diagnostic practices on treatment, prognosis, and well-being.

Outcome Research Design: Methodological issues in intervention research, innovative qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methodology, single subject designs, case studies exemplifying assessment and outcome research practices, statistics in assessment and outcome research, data analysis procedures, and report writing.