Facts and figures

Universities remain the single most popular choice of new psychology doctorates, with almost 18 percent of them working in these settings, according to data APA's Research Office gathered this spring through its biennial Doctorate Employment Survey.

The second favorite career setting was "other" human services--such as clinics and nursing homes--at 14 percent. Third was hospitals at 12 percent.

Collapsing employment settings into broader categories yields a somewhat different but nonetheless familiar picture: Hospitals and other human services settings were most frequently chosen, with 26 percent of respondents working in these organized settings. Higher education settings (universities and four-year colleges, excluding medical schools) took second place with 22 percent, or just over one-fifth, of new doctorates. Business, government and other settings placed third at 18 percent. Managed care was at 11 percent, independent practice was at 9 percent and schools and other educational settings were at 8 percent. (Independent practice settings are lower than one might expect because these are new doctorates who, by and large, are not yet licensed for work in independent settings.)

Only 3 percent were employed in medical school settings, and 2 percent found employment in other academic settings.

These percentages make perfect sense in light of the continued dominance of the health-service provider subfields among new doctorates in psychology. Data from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Survey of Earned Doctorates revealed that in 1998, only four fields (clinical, counseling, family and marriage counseling, and school) accounted for more than half (53 percent) of the PhDs awarded in psychology. Some 11 "traditional research" subfields stood at 41 percent and almost 6 percent of the new PhDs were awarded in I/O and quantitative.

(The NSF data do not include counts of the PsyD degrees. However, the data from APA's Doctorate Employment Survey do count the PsyD.)