A snapshot of psychology graduate students Who are APA's student affiliates? APA's Membership Office recently conducted a survey to learn more about this growing group. Slightly more than 10,000 of APA's 44,000 student affiliates responded to the survey, and the results mirror findings from other sources on the same or similar populations. Here's what APA's Research Office found: • Minority representation among student affiliates is almost 17 percent. Students of Hispanic heritage are most numerous, followed by Asians and blacks. Affiliates with multiple racial/ethnic backgrounds were at 3.6 percent. Interestingly, student affiliates were far more likely to answer the item on race/ethnicity when compared with members of the association. • The average age of APA student affiliates was 32.8 years, with men almost a year-and-a-half older than women. Baccalaureate candidates reported a mean age of 27.5 compared with graduate-level students at age 33. • Most of the student affiliates were full-time students (75 percent) and there were no differences in enrollment status by gender or race/ethnicity. There were slight variations in enrollment status by level of program; undergraduate students and students in doctoral-level programs were most likely to be enrolled full-time, followed by those in master's-level programs (84 percent v. 68 percent). This likely represents the marketing of master's programs and education to those who already are employed and who may be seeking to upgrade skills. • Most of the respondents (83 percent) expected to earn their degrees within the next three years (by 2003). • Seventy-two percent of responding affiliates chose a health-service provider subfield as their major area and 21 percent chose a research subfield. • Fully 73 percent of the respondents indicated that they would seek licensure. Source: 1999­2000 Student Affiliate Survey, compiled by APA's Research Office, August 2000.

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