A Social Network Analysis of International Collaboration in Counseling Psychology

Abstract

Over the past two decades, counseling psychology has emerged as an international discipline. Despite efforts to internationalize counseling psychology and increase cross-cultural relationships, few studies have considered international collaboration on scientific scholarship as a metric or factor of internationalization. Therefore, using social network analyses, we tested the occurrence and patterns of collaborations between authors from different countries on published studies in the Journal of Counseling Psychology and The Counseling Psychologist from 2005 to 2015. Results indicated that a small proportion of possible international collaborations existed, as measured by network density, and the majority of collaborations involved authors affiliated with institutions in the United States. However, international collaboration significantly increased over time, as measured by the density of the network. Our findings are consistent with previous research suggesting a lack of cross-national scholarship in counseling psychology and identify global areas for further cross-cultural development.