A systematic review of research on dissertations in health service psychology programs.

Abstract

Completing a dissertation is typically the final step in attaining a doctoral degree in psychology. Health service psychology doctoral programs accredited by the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Commission on Accreditation usually require a dissertation as part of students’ training in partial fulfillment of APA’s competency in research. It should follow that faculty use evidence-based strategies to mentor students through the dissertation process while students search for empirically supported guidance on how to successfully complete this milestone. No review of research on the doctoral dissertation, however, has been conducted. The purpose of this review was to systematically assess research on the psychology doctoral dissertation, particularly in the health service fields of clinical, counseling, and school psychology. A comprehensive literature search focused on the doctoral dissertation in psychology. The search yielded 18 articles that were then sorted into 6 categories: dissertation development in the field, dissertation mentorship, dissertation method, students’ dissertation experiences, dissertation authorship credit, and postdissertation research activity. Based on the empirical literature, we provide directions for future research that could help facilitate evidence-based recommendations for the dissertation process.

Predictors of dissertation publication in clinical and counseling psychology.

“…Dissertations mark the end of a long and complex scholarly training process, culminating in an original research study, which in principle is a publishable scientific contribution (Bell et al, 2019; Vidair et al, 2019). But publishing one’s dissertation research is the exception, not the rule, and this nonpublication pattern is especially clear in clinical and counseling psychology.…”