Compelling reasons for diversification of research methods in counseling psychology must exist in order to overcome natural academic inertia. The two most common arguments for implementing diversity--inapplicability of quantitative research to counseling practice and a need to derive research methods from the "new paradigm" of human knowledge--are too weak to warrant major revisions to current instructional programs. Another rationale which could be used, that of a natural-language approach, is solidly rooted in the knowledge goal of counseling psychology and envisions an understanding of the full range of human experience and behavior. The primary reason for adding natural-language research methods to the field of counseling psychology is that important questions are not easily addressed by quantitative methods alone. Two areas of particular utility for natural-language methods are the generation of categories for understanding human phenomena and the investigation of the interpretation and meaning that people give to events that they experience. An inventory of diverse research methods--those which use numeric data formats as well as those which use natural-language data formats--is required to address the spectrum of questions relevant to the field of counseling psychology. (Author/ABL)