On the Origins of Clinical Psychology Faculty: Who Is Training the Trainers?

There exists little published research regarding the comparative performance of graduate programs in clinical psychology on relevant measures of program achievement. The present report thus aims to provide information about one such measure—program proficiency in training graduates to assume clinical psychology faculty positions. Degree-granting institution and year of degree completion were obtained for 1,529 individuals listed as core faculty at 150 university-based clinical psychology Ph.D. programs accredited by the American Psychological Association. On this basis, leading programs (i.e., those having trained numerous clinical faculty members) are identified. Proficiency in placing graduates in clinical faculty positions was moderately positively correlated with program reputational strength; it was not significantly associated with program size. A set of recommendations for the systematic investigation of factors germane to such proficiency, as well as to program achievement in other important (and heretofore unstudied) domains, is proffered. It is argued that no single measure is adequate as an overall gauge of program excellence.     

Evidence-based practice in psychology

Evidence-based practice is a growing topic of interest in the field of psychology. In 2006, the American Psychological Association (APA) developed a formal policy statement on evidence-based practice in psychology (EBPP). It is now important for the profession to come to a better understanding about what EBPP is (and is not), and to develop a skill set associated with EBPP. The next seven articles explore the history of EBPP, elaborate the definition and present uses of the term, and provide information relevant to the skill set regarding a practice consistent with the evidence-based approach. Many of the articles were derived from the 2007 midwinter meeting of the Council of University Directors of Clinical Psychology, where the program topic was "Evidence-based Practice: What it is, Why It's Important, and What you Need to Know."     

Epistemology and Psychotherapy Data: The Unspeakable, Unbearable, Horrible Truth

Recent discussions of the scientist/practitioner schism in clinical psychology have begun to take note of the epistemology of practice. This article focuses on the far-reaching implications of a very specific aspect of psychotherapy practice—the uncovering of concealed clinical phenomena. These phenomena are both ubiquitous and inaccessible to conventional research methods, leaving the profession in an epistemological dilemma. Using the extensive philosophical analysis of the nature of testimony by the Australian philosopher C. A. J. Coady, It is shown that such anecdotal data are not necessarily invalid (as is often asserted) and may be legitimately used in constructing the knowledge base for the profession of clinical psychology. At the same time, this analysis points the way to new forms of research collaboration between researchers and clinicians in psychology.     

Child and Adolescent Advocacy Through Research: Introduction to Special Section

In this special section, Child and Adolescent Advocacy Through Research, luminaries in advocacy for children tell important, personal stories of how research and values intertwine to influence the policies that affect children and families. In this introduction, we provide a brief historical overview of child advocacy in the United States, its link to American child psychology, and the roles of the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology and the Division of Child, Youth, and Family Services of the American Psychological Association in educating and showing us how to use our science wisely in the service of children. We then preview the individual themes of the articles of this special section.     

Child and adolescent advocacy through research: introduction to special section.

In this special section, Clinical Child and Adolescent Advocacy Through Research, luminaries in advocacy for children tell important, personal stories of how research and values intertwine to influence the policies that affect children and families. In this introduction, we provide a brief historical overview of child advocacy in the United States, its link to American child psychology, and the roles of the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology and the Division of Child, Youth, and Family Services of the American Psychological Association in educating and showing us how to use our science wisely in the service of children. We then preview the individual themes of the articles of this special section.     

Society of pediatric psychology task force report: recommendations for the training of pediatric psychologists

OBJECTIVE: To provide an overview of the types of training experiences considered most important to the development of competency in pediatric psychology. METHODS: This is the work of a task force commissioned by the Society of Pediatric Psychology, Division 54 of the American Psychological Association. RESULTS: Twelve topic areas, adapted from Roberts et al. (1998), deemed important for obtaining knowledge and expertise in pediatric psychology, were identified. These topics include life span developmental psychology; life span developmental psychopathology; child, adolescent, and family assessment; intervention strategies; research methods and systems evaluation; professional, ethical, and legal issues pertaining to children, adolescents, and families; issues of diversity; the role of multiple disciplines in service-delivering systems; prevention, family support, and health promotion; social issues affecting children, adolescents, and families; consultant and liaison roles; and disease process and medical management. Each area is briefly described and recommendations for obtaining training in these areas are offered. CONCLUSIONS: The Society of Pediatric Psychology offers this document as a comprehensive review of the ideal types of training experiences most important to developing competencies in pediatric psychology. These recommendations can be used by graduate students and graduate programs in shaping a training plan for students interested in pediatric psychology training.     

Maintaining psychology's scientific and professional credibility and ethical responsibility to self-regulate: a comment on "validations" of mental health assessment instruments

Recent growth of "managed" mental health care in the United States has spawned huge demand for products that draw on one of psychology's most well developed subdisciplines, tests and measurement. The commercial potential of mental health assessment instruments intended for widespread use, to meet what Kraus, Seligman, and Jordan (this volume) describe as "an industry-wide surge in outcome evaluations in naturalistic ... settings," necessarily raises conflict of interest dilemmas for those who develop and market them. The American Psychological Association has devoted intensive effort to the preceding issue as it pertains to other aspects of the science and practice of clinical psychology. Comparable attention has not been focused recently on the development and marketing of assessment instruments. This Comment highlights the issue and suggests types of self-regulatory actions that might be taken, e.g., requiring and publishing full disclosure statements of authors' relationships to companies that market instruments like the Treatment Outcome Package in psychometric articles in which they are evaluated.     

Feminism found: An examination of gender consciousness in community psychology

Articles about women's issues published in the American Journal of Community Psychology and Journal of Community Psychology, from their inception in 1973 through 2000 were examined for feminist content. Feminism was defined as including consciousness of gender issues, gender‐stratified power imbalances, and contextual analyses of gender. We identified 89 articles with feminist content. All 89 feminist articles were examined to identify themes of gender consciousness and intersecting identities. Within the theme of gender consciousness, we identified articles that addressed power asymmetries, the link between individuals and environments, contextual analyses, and a focus on competencies. Within the theme of intersecting identities, we identified articles that addressed race, class, sexual orientation, and disabilities. We discuss the trend toward more feminist research and explore ways create a feminist subdiscipline within the field of community psychology. Finally, we discuss recommendations for future feminist scholarship in the field. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comm Psychol 31: 189–209, 2003.     

Reputation strength as a determinant of faculty employment: a test of the step-down thesis among clinical psychology doctoral programs

This study tested the folkloristic belief that doctoral degree recipients who pursue academic careers typically wind up at institutions ranked lower in prestige than the institutions at which they trained (the step-down thesis). We used a database of faculty members in 150 clinical psychology doctoral programs accredited by the American Psychological Association, and compared each faculty member's training institution with the current employing institution on three distinct reputation ranking systems: The Center (University of Florida, Gainesville) for overall university reputation, the National Research Council (Washington, DC) for doctoral degree department reputation, and the news magazine, U.S. News and World Report ranking for clinical psychology training program reputation. Although support for the step-down thesis was found across all three ranking systems, a disproportionately large number of professors were also observed to move laterally in terms of their employing institution's reputation.     

Research Training in Pediatric Psychology

Objective data were sought regarding the best choices of graduateschool, internship, or postdoctoral fellowship for a studentwishing to become a pediatric psychologist competent in research.Approximately 2,500 reference citations were collated from theextant issues of the Journal of Pediatric Psychology. One hundredsixty-six of the individuals cited two or more times as firstauthor of an article or book were also listed in the most recentDirectory of the American Psychological Association. Informationis provided as to the universities where these researchers attendedgraduate school and the university and medical-school settingswhere they are currently employed. These researchers were mostoften trained in clinical, developmental, or experimental psychologyat state universities such as Iowa or Michigan or at privateinstitutions such as Columbia, Stanford, or Yale. The largestaggregations of psychology faculty doing research relevant topediatric psychology seem to be at the medical schools and orpsychology departments of the following universities: Harvard,Iowa, Kansas, North Carolina, Stanford, and Virginia.     

Interprofessional collaboration: implications for Combined-Integrated doctoral training in professional psychology

Interprofessional collaboration (IPC) is becoming "best practice" in the field of professional psychology and other health care professions. It was named as a core competency at Competencies 2002 and the Consensus Conference and has been endorsed by the American Psychological Association on several occasions. The authors provide a definition of IPC, present conceptual, scholarly, and pragmatic support for IPC, and offer guidance on how Combined-Integrated (C-I) doctoral programs in professional psychology can include IPC to ensure students are well equipped to respond to a client's complex needs. Furthermore, although C-I programs might be particularly well prepared to incorporate IPC into their training, it is argued that programs in the single practice areas of clinical, counseling, and school psychology also may benefit from the inclusion of IPC.     

Competent Poverty Training

Despite numerous calls to the discipline, attention to poverty and social class remains minimal in psychology even though most human experience is significantly affected by social ranking. As a result, educators lack models for training in the context of poverty. Recent and concerted efforts to define and implement competency‐based models for the practice of professional psychology have resulted in the creation of Competency Benchmarks (American Psychological Association, 2011). Here, these Competency Benchmarks frame the integration of best practices in working with poor and working‐class clients with what we know about what constitutes good training. The result is a competency‐based approach for those who are training psychologists‐to‐be to work effectively with economically challenged clients.     

河南在校大学生对心理学认识的初步调查

目的了解在校大学生对心理学的认识现状,以便为心理学知识普及宣传及指导心理学工作者的工作提供依据,也为心理学的发展提供决策依据。方法采用不记名自填问卷方式,对河南在校大学生进行随机抽样调查。结果对河南在校大学生来说,很多人对心理学都非常感兴趣,他们渴望接触心理学,了解心理学的知识,但有不少人在对心理学的认识还存在不少误区,甚至有20%的人对心理学还存在很大的偏见。结论虽然近几年心理学在中国发展较快,但其社会影响力还远远不够,在大学生中加强心理学知识宣传势在必行。     

Fate of cardiology research originally published in abstract form

A computerized search of 276 randomly selected cardiology abstracts published in conjunction with three national meetings revealed that 137 abstracts (49.6 per cent) led to full-length articles in peer-reviewed journals within a period of 37 to 43 months. The median interval between publication of the abstract and of the article was 14 months. Full-length articles were derived from 5. per cent of the abstracts presented at the meetings of the American Federation for Clinical Research, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the Association of American Physicians ("clinical societies"); 55 per cent of the abstracts presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions; 49 per cent of the abstracts presented at the American College of Cardiology Scientific Sessions; and 35 per cent of the abstracts submitted to the clinical societies but not presented. During the observation period, each abstract was cited a mean of 1.6 times in a journal reference list; the number of citations was not significantly higher for abstracts that led to articles than for abstracts that did not. These findings emphasize the preliminary nature of abstracts and suggest restraint in their citation as references.     

IS COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY “TOO INSULAR”? A NETWORK ANALYSIS OF JOURNAL CITATIONS

The current study uses social network analysis to explore one aspect of cross‐disciplinary connections in community psychology–citations from articles published in community psychology's main journals (i.e., American Journal of Community Psychology and Journal of Community Psychology ) to allied disciplines in 2009. Results indicate that although community psychology journals cited a wide range of disciplines, their levels of citation to any individual journal in another discipline never exceeded 10% of their total network citations. Additionally, journals in other disciplines did not exhibit many citations to community psychology journals. Observed homophily measures indicate that community psychology journals have more cross‐disciplinary citations than articles published in the flagship journals of clinical psychology, sociology, and public health. However, relative homophily measures suggest that community psychology journals are also far more likely to cite within discipline than expected by chance. Implications and future directions for cross‐disciplinary endeavors in community psychology are suggested.     

Modern pharmacotherapies for type 2 diabetes mellitus

CME CreditsThe National Medical Association (NMA) is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to sponsor continuing medical education (CME) for physicians.Readers:NMA certifies that when CME material is used as directed it meets the criteria for 2 hours of credit in Category I toward the NMA Physician Achievement Award (PAA) or American Medical Association Physician's Recognition Award (PRA).Each physician should claim only those hours of credit that the physician actually spent in the educational activity. Estimated time for reading the text and taking the CME quiz is approximately 2 hours. The NMA will not maintain any records on individual performance.Physician readers will receive 2 category I credits upon correctly answering a minimum of 70% of the CME questions at the end of this CME article. Physician readers must send the answers to JNMA/CME, 1012 Tenth St., NW, Washington, DC 20001. Answers to the CME questions accompanying this article must be marked by September 25, 2001.Authors:The first or second author of articles published in the Journal of the National Medical Association may claim Category I credit for the NMA PAA or the American Medical Association PRA by including a reprint of the article's first page as part of the PRA or PAA application.Applications:PAA application can be obtained by calling NMA's CME office at (202) 347-1895, ext. 241. PRA application can be found by visiting http://www.ama-assn.org/med-sci/pra/prahdr.htm.     

The tyranny of the positive attitude in America: observation and speculation

According to both popular and professional indicators, the push for the positive attitude in America is on the rise. After considering the popular culture zeitgeist, I compare and contrast two recent professional psychology movements—those of positive psychology and postmodern therapy—both of which rest on a foundation of optimism and positive thinking despite their opposing views about a proper philosophy of science. I then present cross‐cultural empirical research that calls into question the typical (North American) assumption that a positive attitude is necessary for (a sense of) well‐being. I also consider findings in health psychology, clinical/counseling psychology, and organizational behavioral science, findings which call into question the assumption that accentuating the positive (and eliminating the negative) is necessarily beneficial in terms of physical and mental health. The clinical/therapeutic implications of this analysis are addressed, as I put forth my conjecture about the existence of what I call the “tyranny of the positive attitude” in the form of a question: If there indeed now exists unprecedented pressure to accentuate the positive, could it then be that the pressure itself to be happy and optimistic contributes to at least some forms of unhappiness? © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol 58: 965–991, 2002.     

Infectious diseases publications in leading medical journals—a comparative analysis

The representation of medical disciplines in leading journals may provide valuable information on their respective importance for both researchers and funding agencies. We were interested in the scientific contribution of infectious diseases to leading medical journals and their ranking compared to other medical disciplines. Original articles and short communications in three leading medical journals from 2003 to 2009 were analyzed by contributing medical discipline and by nation: The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), The Lancet, and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The medical disciplines were selected according to a standard textbook (Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine). Each article was categorized into one to three medical disciplines. The most frequently represented disciplines in 3,953 articles were cardiology (19.5?%), infectious diseases (18.6?%), and hematology/oncology (15.9?%). Each of the journals had another leading discipline: cardiology in JAMA, hematology/oncology in NEJM, and infectious diseases in The Lancet. In the American journals, contributions from US researchers dominated the field (52.6?% in NEJM, 73.6?% in JAMA), while the majority of papers in The Lancet originated from non-US residents (76.5?%). This study underlines the importance of infectious diseases as a medical discipline in clinical research.