APAGS Grants $12,000 to Advance Diversity in Doctoral Programs

The American Psychological Association of Graduate Students (APAGS) Committee has recently selected four grantees and dispersed $12,000 to support the recruitment, retention and leadership training of diverse psychology doctoral students.

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Now in its second year, the APAGS Student Diversity Initiative Award provides funding of up to $3,000 per institution to address “leaky pipelines” on the road to successfully completing a doctorate. Efforts will be directed to students and prospective students with traditionally underrepresented identities in race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, disability, religion, language, socioeconomic status, and age.

We are pleased to present our distinguished awardees:

Howard University

HU’s Counseling Psychology Program will use its funding to address the goal of retaining and recruiting highly qualified diverse students through the creation of a Graduate Education & Training in Psychology Podcast.  The purpose of the podcast is to increase awareness of the doctoral program, provide networking, research, and professional development opportunities for grad students, and even fundraise.

San Diego State University

SDSU’s Joint Doctoral Program (JDP) in Clinical Psychology will use its funding to cultivate and maintain a diverse student body within the doctoral program and clinical psychology at large. The goals will be met via committee initiatives focused on recruitment, retention, mentorship and leadership – for example diversity aimed events, mentoring potential applicants, and hosting a diversity mixer during interviews.

Tennessee State University 

TSU’s Counseling Psychology Program will use its funding to expand the reach and understanding of the program’s Microaggressions Work Group (MWG), a collaboration between students and faculty to facilitate program-wide development concerning microaggressions. It does this through educational and experimental training, member support, and advocacy and awareness.

University of Virginia 

The Black Scholars in Education & Human Development Writing Group has created a space for black doctoral students and postdocs to develop and enhance their writing skills in a community of support. In addition to their monthly writing sessions, the group plans to use funding to convene once a semester for a retreat focused on writing skills and wellness.

APAGS encourages you to consider applying in our fall 2020 cycle.

Careers in Science-Related Policy, Part 1: Balancing Research with Policy Interests in Graduate School

Mary Fernandes, Melanie Arenson, Elyse Mowle

The number of PhD graduates that pursue traditional tenure-track faculty career paths is declining yearly (Horn, 1999). Many graduate students choose to pursue “alternative” careers in business, industry, policy, education, practice, and more. Unfortunately, while most PhD training programs adequately train students for research-based careers, few are able to support the needs of students with alternative goals. As a result, graduate students are left to supplement their training with experiences aligned with their career goals. But how? Well, if you’re interested in pursuing a career that integrates science and policy, you’re in luck! Below, we have listed some helpful educational and training resources to help you build your policy-related skill-set, as well as some tips to help you balance your research responsibilities with such opportunities. 

Resources/tips for students interested in policy 

  1. Look for policy trainings locally and/or at the conferences that you attend (e.g., SPSSI’s 2019 Policy Workshop). 
  2. Get involved in policy-making or policy-influencing bodies at your university (e.g., Graduate Association of Student Psychologists, University Executive Committees, etc.). 
  3. Get involved in your local Psychological Association and/or other mental health organizations that include a strong advocacy or policy component. Ask to get involved in these roles. 
  4. Seek advice from psychologists in your area of study who currently hold policy positions of interest to you. Ask them what their path to their position was and try to emulate it. 
  5. Align your research and practice work with your career goals as much as possible. In your research, think about the policy implications of your work (see this blog post for more information). Stay updated on policies relevant to your clients. 
  6. Apply for training grants that might allow you to pursue a more full-time educational experience while in graduate school (e.g., the Predoctoral Fellowship in Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services). 

Tips for balancing policy interests with research and clinical work

  1. For most students, the ability to pursue opportunities outside of graduate school will likely require the approval of a mentor or department head. Be prepared to justify the experiences that you wish to pursue and how they align with your career goals. Consider ways to gain buy-in from your mentor. 
  2. Prioritize your interests. If you have a clear picture of your ideal career endpoint, that might help you prioritize. If you do not have a clear endpoint, do not panic! Consider prioritizing experiences that might help you explore potential careers of interest. 
  3. Practice saying no in an assertive and kind manner. In order to make room for the experiences that you wish to gain, you will need to say no to ones that are less aligned with your goals.
  4. Budget your time. As a graduate student, you’re probably already well-versed in this skill. However, adding additional responsibilities might require more skills. Consider blocking out chunks of time or days for different responsibilities (i.e. research: Friday-Monday, practicum: Tuesday, clinical work: Wednesday, policy work: Friday). Make a plan, and stick to it. Try to arrange your policy-related educational experiences around times when you can truly gain the most out of them. This might be during the summer, during a semester when your course load is lower, or during a “gap” year. 
  5. Consider ways in which your policy interests can be integrated with your research interests. This might serve the dual role of 1) having your research inform your policy, and vice versa, and 2) gaining buy-in from your advisor in the form of publications, conference presentations, etc.
  6. Self-care! Adding more to your plate means expanding your mental, physical, and emotional resources. Family time, sufficient sleep, healthy eating, and exercise are important. The more you stretch your limits, the more important these will become. 

Benefits of pursuing policy-related experiences in graduate school

  1. Skills you learn (writing and presenting information for a variety of audiences, speaking to stakeholders and policymakers) are applicable across many fields, whether you go into research, a clinical career, industry, or policy full time.
  2. Sharing your passion about a particular area of interest (eg. specific population, pathology, social-justice issue, etc.) could help you stand out during internship and postdoc interviews.
  3. Networking! Getting involved at the university, local, state, and national levels means meeting and developing professional relationships with more psychologists in your field and area of interest.
  4. Exploring and narrowing down career interests. You might find novel ways to use your skills and pursue an interest that you hadn’t thought about before delving into a policy opportunity. 
  5. Gain a different perspective. Engaging in policy work might allow you to form a more macro-level perspective than is typically afforded when primarily working with individuals in clinical or research settings. A more systems-based perspective, might, in turn, inform your research and clinical practice. 
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What Will Internship Sites Say About My Medical Marijuana?

Recently, we received this question in our APAGS inbox:

“As a psychology doctoral student, I am about to apply for internships. I take prescribed medical marijuana for a health condition.  How do I approach the issue of drug testing as part of pre-internship employment screening?” 

What a good question. I reached out to Dr. Jeff Baker, the head of the Association of Psychological Postdoctoral and Internship Centers, for his opinion on the matter. Dr. Baker kindly replied, giving his own personal thoughts on the matter (not those of APPIC’s) as formed by his years as a training director.  He said this issue has come up a few times before, and it’s not as simple as drawing a line around states where it is legal. He writes, “There are many sites in Colorado and California, where THC is legal, that will not allow a positive drug screen for it.  I’m not positive the rationale is universal, but a few programs have stated, ‘Alcohol is legal, but we do not allow trainees to have it in their system.'”

Dr. Baker’s advice continues —

“1. If a site does not allow medical marijuana, hopefully it says that in public materials (especially in states where that is allowed).  The site should have some statement saying it requires THC (drug) screenings so the applicant can decide what sites might be eligible or ineligible.

2. If this information isn’t public, I would check with the site’s Human Resources department, hopefully anonymously and discreetly, prior to submitting an application.  Some will have a policy, and some will not. This is not to be sneaky, but it is to remove any possibility that they would track your application.  PS: Don’t call from your cellphone with caller ID.  I don’t think most sites would go to this trouble to find out who called, but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious.

3. When checking with anyone at the program, I would advise applicants to be very clear about having a medical condition (do not give the name and disclose only what is necessary); that they have been prescribed THC; and that THC has been helpful for them to manage their medical condition which has been approved by a licensed health care provider.

4. I would advise them to apply to those sites that say it is not a problem but carefully read their public materials about drug screens.

5. I would advise them to be cautious about those that do not know their policy or clearly state that medical THC would be counted as a positive drug screen and is not allowed at this site. If they do NOT review the public/HR policy about prescribed THC and match to a site, then they find out that medical marijuana is not allowed, they have wasted a lot of time.

6. I do NOT advise applicants to consult with the program or training director directly about the issue.  I fear that will likely increase the chances that site will decline to interview that person. They will be taking a chance by disclosing it. This is NOT true for the vast majority of training directors but there is no need to disclose identifying information prior to submitting an application.”

With any luck, prospective sites will see you, dear reader, as an asset all around. Thank you for being so responsible and proactive with treatment and contacting APAGS with your question.

Increasing Research Transparency in Psychological Science: How Can Graduate Students Participate?

Written by: Michelle Rivers, Rachael Soicher, and Dr. Morton Ann Gernsbacher

  1. What is transparency in research, and why does it matter?

Research transparency, also referred to as “open science,” is the process of making research and its dissemination accessible to all levels of society. Practices that increase research transparency accelerate progress toward solving the persistent problems of society. For example, you may have heard about the “replication crisis” in psychology and other sciences. Engaging in open science practices can help make science more reproducible and thus more trustworthy.

As the field of psychology works toward greater research transparency, how can you get involved? In this post, we talk about some baby steps you can take as a graduate student, and we address some common challenges you may face along the way.

2. How can you get started?

Below we’ve crafted a short list of ways you can make your research more transparent. Think of baby steps. Don’t feel like you have to do all of them at once!

  • Pre-register your study design, hypotheses, and planned analyses. Place them in a locked file (hardcopy or electronically) or post them on free websites like AsPredicted or Open Science Framework.
  • Make your study materials, data, preprints, and post-prints publicly available online, such as on your lab’s website or on Open Science Framework.
  • Avoid “Questionable Research Practices,” such as selectively reporting dependent measures/entire experiments, revising your sample size after viewing your data, or so-called “HARKing” (hypothesizing after the results are known).
  • Take advantage of research collaborations. Do you have or need access to a particular demographic sample? Check out StudySwap or Psychological Science Accelerator, online platforms for research replication, collaboration, and resource exchanges.
  • Use free and open-source software so it’s easier for others to reproduce your exact methods and analyses. For example, OpenSesame and PsychoPy are open-source applications for running psychology experiments, LimeSurvey is open-source survey software, G*Power is free software for running power analyses, and R is free software for statistical computing and graphics
  • Practice disseminating your research to diverse audiences. For example, one of us, Michelle, manages a blog (cogbites.org) run by early-career academics that focuses on translating scientific research about the study of mental processes to a general audience. To learn more about science communication and outreach, consider applying to attend ComSciCon, a workshop for graduate students, by graduate students.
  • Stay informed! If you have an advanced stats or methods course in your program, encourage the instructor to include recent readings on research transparency. One of us, Morton, teaches an open-access active-learning Research Methods course, and you can find other teaching resources here. Consider starting a reading group with other students in your program!

Continue reading →

The Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP): What’s race got to do with it?

This blog post is a part of the series, “CARED Perspectives,” developed by the APAGS Committee for the Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Diversity (CARED). This series will discuss current events and issues in psychology and how these relate to graduate students. If you are interested in contributing to the CARED Perspectives series, please contact Aleesha Young, Chair of APAGS-CARED.

By Fiona C. Thomas

Grad school, that time in your life where you are constantly thinking about what milestone comes next. Course completion, Master’s thesis, comps, practica, dissertation proposal, data collection, analysis, publications…and that final training experience…internship. Although it feels like so much of our preparation in grad school is for this near final stage of the internship, there is one more milestone to meet before we can finally refer to ourselves as licensed psychologists – the EPPP.

The Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP) was first administered in 1965 (Rehm & Lipkins, 2006) and is now a key requirement to independent practice as a clinical psychologist. It is required for licensing in all US states, three US territories, and the majority of Canadian provinces (DeMers & Schaffer, 2012). After all our years of training, and unique experiences along the way, it is that one shared experience we will all have as we work towards independent practice.

As I prepare to begin internship in September, this next milestone of licensure is on my mind. When do I begin preparing for this exam? What are the most effective methods to study for it? What is the pass rate? It is also timely to be thinking about this exam as a second part to the EPPP, which assesses professional skill, is a new requirement coming to an undisclosed list of jurisdictions in 2020 (Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards [ASPPB], 2019).

With these questions on my mind, I recently became aware of a study conducted by Dr. Brian Sharpless which found performance discrepancies based on ethnicity (2018). In other words, failure rates were highest for individuals who identified as Black (38.5%), Hispanic (35.6%), Asian (24%), and lowest for those who identified as White (14.07%) (Sharpless, 2018). Interestingly, it was not the first time these findings emerged. In 2013, Sharpless and Barber identified that doctoral programs with greater ethnic diversity also reported lower program-wide EPPP pass rates. Going back almost four decades to an early study on this topic, Werner (1981) similarly found that Whites had an EPPP pass rate almost twice that of any other ethnic group. Reviewing survey data of individuals who graduated between 2005 and 2015 with a doctoral degree in clinical, counseling, school or combined/integrated psychology, Bowman and Ameen (2018) found similar results. In particular, their analysis indicated that White psychologists were significantly more likely to pass the EPPP on the first administration compared to psychologists of color (92 percent vs. 83 percent). For this study, psychologists of color included individuals who identified as Asian, Hispanic/Latino, multiracial, Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, and Middle Eastern/North African (Bowman & Ameen, 2018).

As someone who identifies as an ethnic minority, these studies surprised me. What variables contributed to these fail rates? What could be done about this? And what did I need to know to be better prepared so that I didn’t become an embarrassing and expensive statistic?

Of course, as with all research, there are limitations to these findings, and this is important to keep in mind. Until recently, demographic information (e.g., ethnicity) was not collected in EPPP administration (DeMers, 2009). This means that these studies are mainly based on self-report information, which is less robust and reliable compared to test administration data (Bowman & Ameen, 2018). Additionally, some ethnic minorities are not properly represented in these studies. In the studies mentioned here, Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) Psychologists and Indigenous Psychologists are not included as distinct groups. We also have limited information about pass/fail rates for ethnic minority licensure applicants in Canada. Despite these limitations, the replication of such results has prompted me to wonder what the root causes of these differences are and what can be done to address this discrepancy.

In good news, the test publisher, ASPPB, has started collecting race and ethnicity data as optional information on the EPPP. This will continue to better inform whether some test takers, namely test-takers of color, are at a disadvantage. Importantly, this information will be collected as optional data after the completion of the exam to avoid priming any stereotype threats (ASPPB, 2019). If questions show differential responding by ethnicity, ASPPB will take specific items to a diversity committee who can then review and decide whether to keep or discard the questions in future tests. Relatedly, graduate and internship programs are also becoming aware of this discrepancy. Such knowledge can lead to initiatives to better prepare ethnic minority students.

As psychology’s clients and practitioners becomes increasingly diverse, it is important to understand how the EPPP and other high-stakes exams may be leaving certain individuals behind. Factors such as Eurocentric item construction, minority stress, or performance expectancy may or may not be playing a role in score discrepancies (Bowman & Ameen, 2018). Such hurdles can only be identified by appropriately collecting data on race and ethnicity, and transparently reviewing it.

As a member of the APAGS Committee for the Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Diversity (APAGS-CARED), we are keen to explore this further and will be hosting a webinar on this very topic on October 1, 2019.  We hope you will join us!

If you have experience with taking the EPPP and have tips to share for future licensure applicants, we would love to hear from you! Please feel free to share your experiences below.

References

Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards. (2019). The Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP): Frequently asked questions. Retrieved from https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.asppb.net/resource/resmgr/eppp_2/eppp__part_2-skills__faq_s.pdf

Bowman, N., & Ameen, E. (2018, June). Exploring differences in pass rates on the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/communique/2018/06/pass-rates.

DeMers, S. T. (2009). Understanding the purpose, strengths, and limitations of the EPPP: A response to Sharpless and Barber. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 40, 348–353. doi:10.1037/a0015734.

DeMers, S. T., & Schaffer, J. B. (2012). The regulation of professional psychology. In S. J. Knapp (Ed.), APA handbook of ethics in psychology: Volume 1: Moral foundations and common themes (pp. 453–482). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Rehm, L. P., & Lipkins, R. H. (2006). The examination for professional practice in psychology. In T. J. Vaughn (Ed.), Psychology licensure and certification: What students need to know (pp. 39–53). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Sharpless, B., & Barber, J. (2013). Predictors of Program Performance on the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP). Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 44(4), 208-217.

Werner, E. (1981). A review of the examination for professional practice in psychology. Sacramento, CA: California Department of Consumer Affairs.