Current Patterns of Training in Personality Assessment During Internship

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Clinical Psychology
• Personality Assessment

Background:

• Broad-based training in objective and projective personality assessments is a traditional component of applied psychology.
• Previous research indicates a decline in projective assessment training during psychology internships.
• Current training patterns and expectations for personality assessment are not well-documented.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate current internship directors' expectations for graduate school training in objective and projective personality assessments.
• To assess directors' ratings of the importance of this training.
• To identify current training patterns in objective and projective assessments during internships.

Main Methods:

• Survey of 355 psychology internship programs affiliated with the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers.
• Data collected on training patterns and perceived importance of objective and projective personality assessments.

Main Results:

• Significant training in objective measures like MMPI (68%-51%), PAI (59%-25%), and MCMI (51%-34%) was reported.
• Training in projective techniques such as Rorschach (35%-26%), storytelling (41%-19%), sentence completion (41%-18%), and drawings (36%-9%) was less prevalent.
• Adult program directors favored objective tests, while child program directors showed a preference for projective tests.

Conclusions:

• There is a decreased valuation and emphasis on projective techniques in current psychology internship training programs.
• Objective personality assessments appear to be prioritized over projective methods in many internship settings.
• This trend suggests a potential shift in the foundational skills emphasized in clinical psychology training.