The roles of clinical psychologists: a comparison of faculty models and student practicuum roles

This article focuses on the definition of faculty education and training models, as compared to student field placement job roles. Both faculty models and student roles are described in terms of tasks and job skills that were judged important. An inverse factor analysis was performed for the task importance judgements, separately for the faculty sample and the student sample. Group membership was used to calculate both task and job skill profiles. Those profiles were compared to determine the similarities and differences between the faculty and student models. Overall, there is a lack of similarity between faculty members' education and training models and student field placement job roles, as identified by the multidomain job analysis technique. One must conclude either that the faculty models represent a developmental view, rather than the current reality as represented by field placement jobs, or that those jobs are artificial roles that are irrelevant insofar as education and training are concerned.