I recently wanted to give my students some idea of the
proportion of psychologists who currently work in
clinical psychology. The poor best I could do was to point
to a 1993 APA survey called "Profile of All APA Members:
1993," presented in Weiten's intro book, "Psychology:
Themes and variations 3/e" as a pie chart of "Employment
of psychologists by setting" (p. 19, data below*). The chart
suggests that in 1993 there were 2+ psychologists in
clinical practice for each academic. (I thought it would
be much higher, maybe 8 or 10, but of course "by setting"
isn't the same as "by specialty" ). Wayne Weiten points
out that APA doesn't include the research psychologists
who had decided to join APS. There is no estimate of
what percentage of psychologists belong to neither
organization.
Ideally, I'd like to be able to say what proportion of
psychologists (however defined) were in clinical practice,
or perhaps what proportion completed a clinical PhD,
in each decade of the 20th century. Can any TIPSter give
me or point me to better or more recent data on the
question, please?
-David
*from 1993 APA survey of employment by setting:
Colleges and universities 27%,
Hospitals and clinics, 22%,
Private practice 33%,
Business and government 6%,
Elementary and secondary schools 4%,
Other 8%
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David G. Likely, Department of Psychology,
University of New Brunswick
Fredericton, N. B., E3B 5A3 Canada
History of Psychology:
http://www.unb.ca/psychology/likely/psyc4053.htm
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