Specialty designation in psychology: developing a Canadian model

Canadian Psychology, Jan 1994 by Service, John

Responses were returned by 41 of the organized psychology groups (91%) and 237 individuals (29.6%) with the provincial sample responding at a higher rate (37%) than the CPA sample (22.3%). Data analyses were carried out separately for these three samples. Additionally, within the Provincial sample, the data from the CPPQ members were analyzed separately due to the methodological concerns of translating the questionnaire from one language to another. Nonetheless, there were very few differences between any of these groups. The agreement between the organizational leaders and the individual psychologists helped to overcome concerns over generalizability of the individual survey data due to the low response rate. Arguably, people who have been elected, or appointed, as leaders of organized psychology, are those who best represent the concerns and interests of their constituencies. Only the combined results from the survey of individuals are reported here; a more detailed presentation of the results has been presented elsewhere (Service, et al., 1989).

The results from the survey showed that specialty designation exists in a de facto fashion in Canada. More than sixteen different descriptors were used by 73% of the psychologists to define their expertise to the public. Clinical (N = 74), school (N = 23), and neuropsychology (N = 17) were the most frequently reported primary descriptors used by the respondents. However, many of the descriptors were rather esoteric, and almost all were self - defined without the benefit of official scrutiny by the discipline. If psychologists are holding themselves out to the public as specialists then it seems reasonable that there should be some mechanism to determine that the area constitutes a recognizable and distinct specialty and that the psychologist has the expertise being claimed.

Consistent with the use of specialty descriptors, the survey demonstrated a clear demand on the part of the respondents (65.3% in favour with 15% opposed) for a formal specialty designation system. This apparent enthusiasm must be tempered by the knowledge that approximately 70% of those sampled did not feel strongly enough about the issue to respond. While it is always dangerous to speculate on the reasons for not returning a survey, it is probably the case that many psychologists did not see the issue as one which affected them directly. Registered psychologists made up 96% of the respondents from the provincial sample and 74% from the CPA sample. In comparison, a random sample of 400 names from the CPA Directory showed that about 38% of CPA members identified themselves as registered psychologists. Registered psychologists are more likely to be practitioners who are directly concerned with the issue of specialty designation. Perhaps a more conservative interpretation of the survey results would be to say that specialty designation could be seen as an issue primarily of interest to practitioners, as long as the organization and structure of such a system did not affect the status quo of other non - interested psychologists (e.g., those who identify themselves primarily as scientists).