I deeply believe that counseling science and practice should inform each other. Broadly, my research interests lie in four areas: vocational psychology/career development, psychotherapy science, assessment, and cross-cultural counseling.
Career Decision Making
In vocational psychology/career development, over the years I have developed a program focusing on career decision-making. This line of research advances the career decision-making literature by addressing a clinically important but scientifically unclear issue: how inevitable ambiguity about the “right” choice affects career decision-making process and outcomes. Following a series of empirical studies, my research program arrived at a dual-process theory of career decision-making (DTC; Xu, 2021a, 2021b). By accounting for the joint operation of the two processes of career decision-making (i.e., matching information to calculate fit and reducing the threat of ambiguity to reach commitment), the dual-process theory has potential to serve as a platform that helps integrate existing theories and research, direct future research and practice on career decision-making, and provide ecologically valid implications for working with diverse populations. Currently, I am developing a process model of career decision-making and adaptation within the DTC, which has the potential to offer more direct guidance to counseling and educational practice on career decision-making. Based on the DTC, I plan to develop measures for key concepts of the DTC and examine its key propositions. Additionally, I plan to use the dual-process theory to explore a more process-oriented conceptualization of decision-making difficulties (Xu & Bhang, 2019; Xu & He, 2022) and potentially develop alternative difficulty assessment based on the new conceptualization.
Psychotherapy Science
I hold an interest in psychotherapy science with an emphasis on the change mechanism of counseling and cross-cultural efficacy of counseling. I have explored two topics that are important to the contextual model of counseling: a reciprocal model of working alliance and therapeutic outcomes (Xu & Tracey, 2015), and differential efficacy of psychotherapy modalities in Chinese culture (Xu & Tracey, 2016). The first project used latent change score modeling and found results challenging the linear conceptualization of the alliance-outcome relationship. My second project used network meta-analysis to examine the cultural congruence hypothesis of therapy efficacy and found that experiential and indigenous therapy modalities, which fit the change philosophy of Chinese culture better than CBT does, demonstrate better efficacy than CBT in Chinese culture. Moving forward, I plan to continue exploring the effect mechanisms of counseling and psychotherapy with a cross-cultural lens. I am particularly interested in the interplay of problem-centered and process-centered approaches in the cross-cultural practice of counseling. Additionally, I plan to explore how uncertainty management plays out in the change process.