Assessing student interest and familiarity with professional psychology specialty areas.

The present study examined undergraduate psychology students' (N = 83) self-reported interest in and familiarity with five specialty areas in professional psychology: counseling psychology, clinical psychology, school psychology, forensic psychology, and criminal profiling. Results suggest that although students are quite interested in careers that combine psychology and law, their level of familiarity with such careers fails short of their interest level. Based on these findings, psychology programs should consider providing more information to students about careers in professional psychology, particularly regarding careers that combine psychology and law.

**********

Several studies have examined students' knowledge of psychology; however, these investigations have primarily focused on assessing misconceptions regarding the content domain of psychology, particularly the extent to which students endorse commonly held beliefs or myths regarding psychology (e.g., Gardner & Dalsing, 1986; Griggs & Ransdell, 1987; Landau & Bavaria, 2003; Ruble, 1986; Vaughn, 1977). In contrast, relatively little attention has been given to examining students' knowledge of psychology as a profession. Results of the few studies that have been conducted in this area suggest that undergraduate psychology students may have limited knowledge of and/or hold inaccurate beliefs about the profession of psychology (e.g., Gallucci, 1997; Rosenthal, McKnight, & Price, 2001; Rosenthal, Soper, Rachal, McKnight, & Price, 2004). For instance, research suggests that students often underestimate the amount of time it takes to complete doctoral study and overestimate starting salaries for psychology graduates (Galluci, 1997; Nauta, 2000). In addition, it appears that students frequently underestimate the qualifications necessary to become a professional psychologist (Rosenthal et al., 2001). Although Rosenthal et al. (2004) found evidence to suggest that the completion of psychology courses may help correct some of the misconceptions that students have about professional psychology, these authors noted that even "sophisticated" students (i.e., those who had completed five or more psychology courses) continue to harbor erroneous beliefs about the profession.

As noted by Kuther (2004), although there are many career opportunities within the field of psychology, students appear to be increasingly interested in careers that combine psychology and law. This field is growing rapidly, as evidenced by the recent publication of a number of journals dedicated to the area and the formation of professional organizations devoted to psychology and law. Joint-degree programs have also been created which allow students to earn degrees in law while earning doctoral degrees in psychology (Kuther, 2004). Such programs are becoming widely accepted (Woody, 2003). With evidence of a growing interest in this emerging interdisciplinary field, it is important to assess whether students' knowledge and level of interest in the field are commensurate with one another.

With this in mind, this study examined students' interest in and familiarity with professional specialty areas of psychology, including forensic psychology. Because effective career decision-making rests upon having accurate career-related information, it is important to determine whether students are adequately familiar with the specialty areas of psychological practice in which they are most interested. Armed with such information, faculty members would be better equipped to assist students majoring in psychology with career-related decisions. It was anticipated that students would demonstrate greater interest in forensic areas of psychology as compared to the more traditional specialty areas (e.g., counseling, clinical, and school psychology). It was also anticipated that students would report greater interest in, as compared to familiarity with, forensic specialty areas. In contrast, it was hypothesized that students would indicate less interest in, as compared to familiarity with, the traditional specialty areas.

Method

Participants were 83 undergraduate students (20 men and 63 women) majoring in psychology at a midsized university located in the Midwest. Participants were recruited via sign up sheets posted on a research bulletin board maintained by the psychology department of the university. Psychology students of different class ranks (i.e., freshman, sophomore, junior and senior) were invited to participate in the study, and were offered a receipt for their participation to be used for extra credit or to fulfill a course requirement.

Participants ranged in age from 18 to 36 years, with a mean age of 22.04 years (SD = 4.15). The sample was largely Caucasian (n = 76), followed by African American (n = 4), Hispanic/Latino (n = 2), and Native American (n = 1). Sixteen of the participants classified themselves as freshmen, 8 as sophomores, 19 as juniors, and 40 as seniors.

After providing demographic information, participants rated their interest in and familiarity with subfields of psychology using a 5-point Likert-type scale, ranging from 0 to 4, designed specifically for the study. For the interest dimension, rating anchors were labeled as follows: 0 = no interest, 1 = little interest, 2 = moderate interest, 3 = very interested, and 4 = interested enough to pursue a career in this specialty area. For the familiarity dimension, rating anchors were labeled as follows: 0 = never heard of it; 1 = heard of it, but know nothing about it; 2 = know very little about it; 3 = moderately familiar with it; and 4 = very familiar with it. Five professional specialty areas were examined: counseling psychology, clinical psychology, school psychology, forensic psychology, and criminal profiling. Although it is not actually recognized as a subfield of psychology, "criminal profiling" was included in order to assess student interest/familiarity in this widely-popularized (e.g., via television crime show dramas) area.

Results

A one-way repeated-measures ANOVA was conducted with the factor being specialty area and the dependent variable being interest level. The means and standard deviations for both interest and familiarity levels are presented in Table 1. Results of the ANOVA indicated that students were significantly more interested in certain specialty areas as compared to others, Wilks' A = .53, F(4,79) = 17.24, p < .001, multivariate [[eta].sup.2] = .47. Pairwise comparisons using the Bonferroni correction to control for Type I error indicated that students were significantly more interested in forensic psychology, criminal profiling, counseling psychology, and clinical psychology as compared to school psychology. A second one-way repeated-measures ANOVA was conducted with the factor being specialty area and the dependent variable being familiarity level. Results indicated that students were significantly more familiar with particular specialty areas as compared to others, Wilks' A = .56, F(4,79) = 15.34,p < .001, multivariate [[eta].sup.2] = .44. Pairwise comparisons using the Bonferroni correction indicated that students were significantly more familiar with both clinical and counseling psychology as compared to forensic psychology, criminal profiling, and school psychology.

Paired samples t-tests were conducted to compare interest versus familiarity for each of the five specialty areas. Using the Bonferroni approach to control for Type I error, results of four out of five t-tests were significant. Students were more familiar than interested in both school psychology, t (82) = 5.19, p < .001, and clinical psychology, t (82) = 2.11, p = .04. In contrast, students reported greater interest versus familiarity with both forensic psychology, t (82) = 4.04, p < .001, and criminal profiling, t (82) = 2.58, p < .001.

Discussion

Results suggest that student interest in counseling and clinical psychology is met or exceeded by their levels of familiarity with these two areas. Further, results suggest that students are less interested in school psychology, as compared to other specialty areas, and their self-reported familiarity with school psychology exceeds their interest level. These findings indicate that students are most informed about clinical and counseling psychology, two of the most popular subfields of psychology, constituting over half of the doctoral degrees awarded between 2002 and 2003 (American Psychological Association, 2005). It should be noted, however, that students appear to be relatively uninformed even about counseling and clinical psychology, in that, on average, they reported their knowledge level as being somewhere between knowing "very little about" and being "moderately familiar" with these two professions.

In line with our prediction, results indicate that although students are relatively more interested in careers that combine psychology and law (i.e., forensic psychology and criminal profiling) as compared to careers in counseling, clinical or school psychology, their self-reported level of familiarity with careers in the former area does not match their interest level. That is, it appears that students' knowledge of psychology and law related careers is not commensurate with their levels of interest in these areas. On average, students indicated that their interest in forensic psychology and criminal profiling fell approximately midway between being "moderately" and "very" interested in these areas. In contrast, their self-reported level of familiarity fell just above knowing "very little about" both areas. Based on these findings, psychology programs should consider providing more information to students about possible career paths that combine psychology and law. For instance, psychology programs might offer courses such as Forensic Psychology or Psychology and Law that provide specific information regarding careers in these areas. Courses offered by criminal justice programs and affiliated schools of law might also be beneficial.

Somewhat unanticipated was the finding that students were relatively uninterested in school psychology. Our own anecdotal observations suggest that students are often unaware that, at the doctoral level, this is a specialty track associated with accreditation by the American Psychological Association (APA) which can lead to licensure as a psychologist. A student who does not gain admission into or does not elect to pursue an APA-accredited program in clinical or counseling psychology can still become licensed as a health service provider via the school psychology route. Perhaps students' interest in school psychology would increase if they possessed a more keen awareness of these facts. Future research should consider exploring this notion.

A major limitation of this study is that students were asked only to self-report their level of familiarity with the various specialty areas. Thus, students may actually be more or less knowledgeable of these areas than their reports suggest. It would be worthwhile for future studies to go beyond mere self-report and attempt to assess students' actual knowledge of these areas. For instance, future investigators might use an instrument similar to the Profession of Psychology Scale, developed by Rosenthal and colleagues (2001), to measure students' understanding of the profession of psychology. Additionally, it would be worthwhile to determine the source of students' knowledge of the profession of psychology and assess the credibility of their information source. The results of such studies might prove useful to faculty members in advising students who are considering careers in professional psychology. For instance, students' relatively high levels of interest in careers that combine psychology and law (e.g., criminal profiling), might be a result of their viewing some of the numerous crime-show dramas on television, such as Law and Order, which often provide inaccurate representations of the work that psychologists do. If this were found to be the case, faculty could focus on developing methods to dissuade students of their misperceptions while directing them toward more credible sources of career-related information.

It should be noted that findings based on this study might not generalize beyond the limits of our sample of psychology majors attending a mid-sized university in the Midwest. Additionally, our sample may represent a selection bias in that students self-selected to participate in the study. Furthermore, our sample consisted of far more seniors than juniors, sophomores, and freshmen. Thus, generalizations from the present findings may be limited in several ways. Had we focused exclusively on the knowledge base of lower class students (e.g., freshmen and sophomores) our results may have been different.

Despite these limitations, the present findings provide evidence to suggest that our undergraduate students have insufficient information regarding professional careers in psychology. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to simultaneously assess both student interest in and familiarity with various specialty areas in professional psychology. However, one previous investigator (Gallucci, 1997) queried psychology students regarding their reasons for deciding to major in psychology and reported that undergraduates harbor unrealistic expectations regarding career opportunities in professional psychology. Gallucci concluded that psychology faculty should assume more responsibility for advising and educating students on the career opportunities available in psychology. More recently, Nauta (2000) and Rosenthal et al. (2004) found evidence to suggest that many students are quite naive about the profession of psychology. Results of our study lend further support to these findings, suggesting that psychology majors are in need of more information regarding professional practice in psychology.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kim Stark-Wroblewski, Department of Psychology, Central Missouri State University, Warrensburg, Missouri, 64093. E-mail: [e-mail].

References

American Psychological Association. (2005). Graduate study in psychology: 2005. Washington, DC: Author.

Gallucci, N. T. (1997). An evaluation of the characteristics of undergraduate psychology majors. Psychological Reports, 81,879-889.

Gardner, R. M., & Dalsing, S. (1986). Misconceptions about psychology among college students. Teaching of Psychology, 13(1), 32-34.

Griggs, R. A., & Ransdell, S. E. (1987). Misconceptions tests or misconceived tests? Teaching of Psychology, 14(1), 210-214.

Kuther, T. L. (2004). Your career in psychology: Psychology and the law. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Wadsworth.

Landau, J. D., & Bavaria, A. J. (2003). Does deliberate source monitoring reduce students' misconceptions about psychology? Teaching of Psychology, 30(4), 311-314.

Nauta, M. M. (2000). Assessing the accuracy of psychology undergraduates' perceptions of graduate admission criteria. Teaching of Psychology, 27(4), 277-280.

Rosenthal, G. T., McKnight, R.R., & Price, A.W. (2001). Who, what, how, and where the typical psychologist is ... the Profession of Psychology Scale. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 28(4), 220-224.

Rosenthal, G. T., Soper, B, Rachal, C., McKnight, R.R., & Price, A.W. (2004). The Profession of Psychology Scale: Sophisticated and naive students' responses Journal of Instructional Psychology, 31 (3), 202-205.

Ruble, R. (1986). Ambiguous psychological misconceptions. Teaching of Psychology, 13(1), 34-36.

Vaughn, E.D. (1977). Misconceptions about psychology among introductory psychology students. Teaching of Psychology, 4, 138-141.

Woody, W. D. (2003). Psychology and the legal system: An interview with Edie Greene. Teaching of Psychology, 30(2), 174-180.

Kimberly Stark-Wroblewski, Tina L. Wiggins, and Joseph J. Ryan, Department of Psychology, Central Missouri State University.

An earlier presentation based on this study was presented at the 113th Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, August 2005, Washington, D.C.

Table 1
Interest and Familiarity Levels in Specialty Areas of Professional
Psychology

                  Interest     Familiarity

Specialty Area    M      SD     M      SD

  Counseling     2.67   1.14   2.86   .70
  Clinical       2.43   1.04   2.69   .71
  School         1.73   1.08   2.33   .86
  Forensic       2.52   1.14   2.12   .89
  Profiling      2.49   1.27   2.22   .98

N = 83.