The primary purpose of this paper is to introduce essential elements of cognitive information processing (CIP) theory, research, and practice as they existed at the time of this writing. The introduction that follows describes the nature of career choices and career interventions, and the integration of theory, research, and practice. After the introduction, the paper continues with three main sections that include CIP theory related to vocational behavior, research related to vocational behavior and career intervention, and CIP theory related to career interventions. The first main section describes CIP theory, including the evolution of CIP theory, the nature of career problems, theoretical assumptions, the pyramid of information processing domains, the CASVE Cycle, and the use of the pyramid and CASVE cycle. The second main section describes CIP theory-based research in examining vocational behavior and establishing evidence-based practice for CIP theory-based career interventions. The third main section describes CIP theory related to career intervention practice, including theoretical assumptions, readiness for career decision making, readiness for career intervention, the differentiated service delivery model, and critical ingredients of career interventions. The paper concludes with regularly updated sources of information on CIP theory.

This annual review of the career counseling and development literature presents a content analysis of refereed journal articles published in 2013. Four research questions guided the analysis: (a) What content topics were included in career development articles published in refereed journals in 2013? (b) To what extent are theory, research, and practice integrated in career development articles published in refereed journals in 2013? (c) What variation exists in the characteristics of career development articles published in refereed journals in 2013? and (d) What variation exists in the content included in theory, research, and practice articles? A total of 360 unique topics were identified in 357 articles from 24 journals. Results indicated that topic content in journals evolved slowly with limited integration of theory, research, and practice. Implications are suggested for (a) future topic content; (b) better integration of theory, research, and practice; (c) education and training; (d) journal editorial policy; and (e) future content analyses of journal articles.

Although some research literature focuses on the integration of mental health and career counseling, there has been little that examines both areas in relation to depression and hopelessness. This study investigated the relationship among dysfunctional career thinking, depression, and hopelessness in a sample of 139 undergraduate and graduate students seeking drop‐in or individual career counseling services at a university career center. The authors found that two aspects of dysfunctional career thinking, decision‐making confusion and commitment anxiety, accounted for a significant amount of variance in depression. Decision‐making confusion also accounted for a significant amount of variance in hopelessness. Implications for counseling practice include the need for more careful screening of career clients who present with high levels of anxiety and negative thinking. Future research could involve more diverse client populations, such as unemployed adults, and explore the use of additional screening measures to assess the intersection of career and mental health issues.

Sixty‐nine Amazon Mechanical Turk workers completed the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (Berle et al., 2011), the Career Thoughts Inventory (Sampson et al., 1996a), and the Career State Inventory (Leierer et al., 2017). Worry was significantly correlated with negative career thinking and its dimensions of decision‐making confusion and commitment anxiety, with readiness and its dimensions of clarity and certainty, and with the self‐assessed cognitive information processing skills of self‐knowledge, options knowledge, decision‐making, and executive processing. Worry was also found to predict the degree of readiness for career decision‐making, negative career thinking, and cognitive information processing requisite skills.