At the heart of many counseling research interests and questions is a desire to understand causal relationships between variables. However, inferring causation from correlational studies ranges from difficult to impossible, and researchers have found that various literature bases contain large proportions of studies that draw unsupported causal inferences. We examined articles published in seven top professional counseling journals over a 2-year period to determine the degree to which causal inferences were present in quantitative studies that could only support correlational inference. We found that 61% of 103 correlational studies contained unsupported causal inferences. We discuss the importance of addressing this methodological problem in counseling research and provide recommendations for drawing valid inferences from correlational studies.

中文翻译：

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专业咨询文献库中不受支持的因果推断

许多咨询研究兴趣和问题的核心是希望了解变量之间的因果关系。然而，从相关性研究中推断因果关系从困难到不可能，研究人员发现，各种文献库包含大量研究得出无根据的因果推断。我们检查了在 2 年期间发表在七种顶级专业咨询期刊上的文章，以确定只能支持相关推理的定量研究中因果推理的存在程度。我们发现 103 项相关研究中有 61% 包含不受支持的因果推断。我们讨论了在咨询研究中解决这一方法论问题的重要性，并为从相关研究中得出有效推论提供了建议。