It has now been 50 years since Flanagan (1954) published his classic article on the critical incident technique (CIT) - a qualitative research method that is still widely used today. This article reviews the origin and evolution of the CIT during the past 50 years, discusses CIT’s place within the qualitative research tradition, examines the robustness of the method, and offers some recommendations for using the CIT as we look forward to its next 50 years of use. The focus of this article is primarily on the use of the CIT in counselling psychology, although other disciplines are touched upon.

This article was written to remind career counselors of the potential depth and subjective impact of both unemployment and employment transitions. An existential framework is used in discussing today's world of work, previous and contemporary career counseling models, existential theory in career counseling, and existential considerations for career counselors. Results from 3 research projects are discussed in light of I. D. Yalom's (1980, 1998) 4 existential themes. Using quotations from participants, the authors move beyond theoretical ideas and underscore the real‐life importance of including the individual's larger subjective perspective when engaging in career counseling. Implications for practice are discussed.

The authors used a phenomenological research method to investigate the career decision-making experiences of 17 employed adults. Thematic results from interview data analysis were organized within 3 overarching themes: decisions centered on relational life, decisions centered on personal meaning, and decisions centered on economic realities. Study results supported and extended contentions that career decisions are embedded in relational life and have contextual meaning. Belonging and the potential for meaningful engagement were integral to career decisions. Implications for the role of career counselors and career counseling are discussed. Recommendations for counseling that facilitates the consideration of belonging and personal meaning in career decisions are offered.Recent career literature has delineated the central role of work in human experience (Axelrod, 1999) and has demonstrated that career decisions and personal issues (Amundson, 1995;Borgen, 1997) are inextricably intertwined. The extension of relational perspectives to the study of career decision making and development (Blustein, Schultheiss, & Flum, 2004) has indicated that career theory needs to take into account emerging evidence that human experience within work and nonwork domains intersects within and across relationships. Career counseling approaches that have focused on Super's life career development approach (Niles, 2003) and existentialism (Cohen, 2003) have offered alternatives to practice based on more traditional theory. Yet, despite an emphasis on more relational, contextual, and meaning-based perspectives in the professional literature, current career counseling practice often continues to reflect traditional matching and information-giving approaches

Fifteen individuals who received outplacement counseling (OPC) were interviewed to determine which services were helpful or hindering and whether there were services they would like to have received but did not. The critical incident technique (J. Flanagan, 1954) was used to analyze the data around 16 emergent categories. Results support previous research on client satisfaction with OPC and extend the knowledge by providing insight into 6 new categories of services individual clients would find helpful.

This research responds to calls for increased understanding of workers' experiences of their work and work contexts. Informed by positive psychology, this study focused on a seldom-studied subset of working individuals who self-identified as doing well with change affecting their work and on strategies that helped or hindered them in doing well, factors that would have helped, and their experiences of change within the context of volatile and changing work situations. Using the enhanced critical incident technique methodology, the authors extracted 790 incidents from 45 participant interviews. These data were organized into the following 10 categories: support from friends and family, support from colleagues, support from professionals, personal attitudes/traits/emotional set, self-care, internal framework and boundaries, taking action, skill/role competence, management style and work environment, and personal life changes/issues. The implications of these categories for research, theory, practice, and organizations are discussed.