Doctoral programs: highlights from SoA

CoA summarized the salient differences between the Guidelines and Principles for Accreditation (G&P) and the proposed SoA for each level of accreditation.

Doctoral programs

What has not changed?

• General practice areas within the scope of accreditation at the doctoral level (Standard I.A.2).
• Requirement that the program is in a regionally-accredited institution (Standard I.B.1.a).
• Standards for education and training of health service psychologists are the same for programs in secular and faith based settings (formerly Footnote 4 — Standard I.B.2).
• Importance of ongoing direct face-to-face interaction with students over their developmental sequence (Standard I.C.1.c).
• Flexibility in regard to how competencies are achieved by students and assessed by faculty (Standard II.B., C. and D).
• Importance of diversity in:
  1. Policies and procedures to ensure nondiscrimination (Standard I.D.1) as a competency (Standard II.B.1.b).
  2. Recruitment and retention of students (Standard III.A.1.b.ii) and faculty (Standard IV.B.5);
  3. Creating an environment that nurtures all students for success (Standard III.B).
• Internship as part of the doctoral sequence of training (Standard II.C.2).
• Demonstration by the program that outcomes have been achieved as appropriate for the area, degree and aims — including those that are part of:
  1. SoA competencies.
  2. Program specific competencies.
  3. Broader areas (e.g., licensure — consistent with federal recognition requirements) (Standard II.D.3).

• Required core faculty (Standard IV.B).
• Requirements for clear and accurate public information (Standard V.A).

What has changed?

• Move from “professional psychology” to Health Service Psychology (Standard I.A.1 — defined further in the glossary).
• Move from program models to practice area and degree type (Standard I.A.2 and Standard I.A.3).
• Integrate the concepts currently found in Footnote 4 of the G&P into the SoA (Standard I.B.2).
• Additional requirements for documentation of student records and their retention (Standard I.D.4).
• Place competencies and their assessment together in the SoA (Standard II).
• Require discipline specific knowledge and set of profession-wide competencies (Standard II.B.1.b).
  1. Set of profession-wide competencies derived through a multistep process that identified points of consensus across the various sets of competencies in the literature.
  2. Required profession-wide competency areas included in SoA:
     1. Evidence-based practice in intervention.
     2. Evidence-based practice in assessment.
     3. Ethical and legal standards.
     4. Individual and cultural diversity.
     5. Research.
     6. Professional values and attitudes.
     7. Communication and interpersonal skills.
     8. Consultation/interprofessional/interdisciplinary.
     9. Supervision.
     10. Reflective practice.
  3. Specific requirements for each competency area defined within Implementing Regulations to allow for CoA modification/adjustment in response to changes in the field and to differentiate specific competencies by level of training, as appropriate.
• More specifics re: expected practicum (Standard II.C.1) and internship training (Standard II.C.2) — including expectations if students do not attend accredited internships (Standard II.C.2.b).
• Require demonstration that program has met its own outcomes and those defined for Health Service Psychology (Standard II.D.3).
• Describe how demonstrated prior knowledge in psychology can serve as a foundation for advanced “broad and general” education in curriculum (Standard II.B.1.a.i and Standard III.A.2.c.i).
• Require programs to engage in review of effectiveness of their diversity practices for students (Standard III.1.b) and faculty (Standard IV.B.5).
• Clarify required communication between doctoral program and internship (Standard V.A.3).