Coursework, instrument exposure, and perceived competence in psychological assessment: A national survey of practices and beliefs of health service psychology trainees.

Abstract

Assessment is critical to health service psychology and represents a core area of coverage during doctoral training. Despite this, training practices in assessment are understudied. Accordingly, this study utilized a national sampling of students (n = 534) enrolled in an American Psychological Association–accredited health service psychology doctoral program with substantive training in clinical or counseling psychology. We asked trainees to rate their competency for instruments in which they had training. We examined trends in training experiences, including both theory-based education and applied clinical opportunities, and explored differences in instrument training trends across program type (PhD/PsyD) and program discipline (clinical/counseling). Results of this study suggest a general convergence with professional practice trends in terms of instrument coverage, less clinical training, and exposure compared with didactic methods and generally small differences across program type and discipline in perceived competence and instrument exposure. Implications for training and education in psychological assessment are discussed.

Doctoral students' intention to use assessments in their career: The incremental role of self‐reported competence

“…We gathered information on coursework, practicum/clinical exposure, supervision, intended use of psychological assessments in their future career, employment setting interest, and competence with specific assessments (both self-reported and performance-based). For greater detail on specific patterns of training exposure to individual assessments; see Ingram et al (2020). Descriptive statistics of the variables of interest are reported in Tables 2 and 3.…”

“…As such, focus on self-awareness and self-knowledge in competency development (Kaslow et al, 2018) would benefit from ensuring trainee perceptions of their competency align with benchmarked progression. Standardized, performance-based benchmarks may also be helpful to guide these conversations (Ingram et al, 2020).…”

“…The peer review history for this article is available at https://publons.com/publon/10.1002/jclp.23415 ENDNOTES 1 Sample sizes of participants will vary between these two reports as the sample in Ingram et al (2020) was only reporting participants who self-reported use of assessments, whereas the current sample required self-report and completion of assessment administration questions in the survey.…”

Measuring Perceived Research Competence of Junior Researchers

“…Research specifically focused on perceived research competence is limited both in quantity and in scope. Regarding graduate student and early career researchers’ perceived competence, research often focuses on broader perceived professional competency ( Graesser, 2014 ; Latorre, 2020 ), clinical competency ( Dozier, 2001 ), or competency utilizing specific assessments ( Ingram et al, 2020 ) instead of competence carrying out research independently. From what we do know, it seems that students who participate in research activities as part of their training report higher levels of research competence, particularly in the areas of data analysis and applying results to practice ( Olehnovica et al, 2015 ).…”

Applicant factors contributing to interview selection, ranking determination, and judgement of “Fit” among health service psychology internship training programs

“…Accordingly, our findings should be generalized in a more restricted manner to settings not well represented and should be limited for the "other" site type given the homogenous collection of internship sites that comprise it. Lastly, future research will benefit from measuring how internship applicant characteristics relate to their subsequent performance/competence, given the nascent stage of research on performance-based metrics (Ingram et al, 2020). Additionally, research is needed on potential systematic biases which occur within the match process and on the degree to which rating differences reflect meaningful decision-making differences by TDs.…”