Proposed APA Policy on Specialty or Proficiency Certification of Psychologists

The American Psychological Association has been asked to develop a policy to address perceived lack of clarity among certification mechanisms available to psychologists who wish to identify themselves to the public as having a specific area of expertise. The intention of the policy is to provide guidance to psychologists who may seek specialty credentials and to protect the public from the adverse effects of credentials that do not actually measure competence. It is anticipated that the proposed policy will be considered by the APA Council of Representatives in February 2006.

Proposed Policy

The American Psychological Association (APA) considers a doctorate from an appropriately qualified program and a license to practice issued by the relevant governing jurisdiction to be the qualifications for professional practice as a psychologist.

Beyond these qualifications, a variety of additional credentials indicating a specialty or proficiency in a specific area of practice are available. Recently, concern has been expressed about the rigor and validity of some of the credentials that are being marketed to psychologists. APA believes that the public and those engaged in the professional practice of psychology would benefit from guidance regarding specialty and proficiency credentials.

APA recommends that psychologists who wish to represent themselves as having a credential related to a specialty or proficiency in psychology beyond the academic degree and legal authority to practice do so only in specialties or proficiencies that are officially recognized by the American Psychological Association through its Commission for Recognition of Specialties or Proficiencies in Professional Psychology or by the American Board of Professional Psychology.

In addition, the American Psychological Association recommends that psychologists make use of proficiency or specialty certifying bodies with the following characteristics:

1. The certifying body makes publicly available information on the certifying body’s functions, standards, and procedures, as well as any substantive changes in these or in the status of individual certificate holders.

2. The certifying body is a non-profit organization that has published bylaws, standards, and procedures and is governed by an independent board of directors, with specified procedures for selection and tenure of board members such that control does not rest with one individual or group of individuals indefinitely.

3. The credential awarded by the certifying body is based on a review and verification of the individual’s training, licensure, and ethical conduct status, and an assessment of competence using instruments such as a work sample, an oral exam, a written exam or other adequate means.

4. The certifying body does not award the credential by employing a “grandfathering process,” whereby applicants who apply for the credential upon its initial development are awarded the credential using criteria more lax than those employed to evaluate candidates who apply later in time or, if grandfathering did occur at the outset, the certifying body identifies to the public credential holders who obtained the credential by grandfathering and have not subsequently passed the more stringent criteria applied to other applicants.

5. The credentialing organization maintains a database from which the public can easily verify the current status of a certificate holder.

6. The organization provides evidence of the application of process improvement procedures to credential review and competency assessment.

These characteristics are derived from criteria adopted by the National Register of Health Services Providers in Psychology (National Register). The National Register does not issue specialty or proficiency credentials, but has developed criteria and an evaluation process for determining which such credentials will be recognized by the National Register and included in the National Register’s listings for individual psychologists. APA believes that the National Register is an organization that is well qualified to develop such criteria and to evaluate whether credentialing bodies meet them. APA has concluded based on its own review that these characteristics are reasonable and reflect a general consensus within the profession.