Idaho State’s Ph.D. program in clinical psychology receives top ranking

The journal Psychological Reports has ranked Idaho State University’s Ph.D. program in clinical psychology first out of 207 programs nationwide and in Canada on its students’ performances on a national professional examination.

“I think it is phenomenal that Idaho State University’s program was ranked No. 1 out of 207 schools listed in this report,” said Kandi Turley-Ames, Ph.D., chair of the ISU psychology department. “This is an objective measure of our program by Psychological Reports, and it just shows our students are working hard and getting topnotch training in their field by our faculty, adjuncts and affiliate faculty.”

Psychological Reports examined the results of the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP) from 1997 to 2005 in a study titled “Comparative Decline of Professional School Graduates’ Performance on the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology.”

The EPPP is the required licensing exam in the United States and Canada for graduates of traditional clinical doctoral programs in psychology and from professional school clinical psychology graduate programs.

The purpose of the Psychological Reports study, published in the winter of 2008, was to examine the difference in the success of passing the exam between traditional and professional clinical psychology programs. Traditional Ph.D. programs, like the one at Idaho State, reported much higher pass rates than did the professional Psy.D. programs. The top 59 mean scores recorded on the EPPP in this time frame were by Ph.D. programs.

“Since the inception of the Idaho State Ph.D. program in clinical psychology in 1995, every single one of our students who has graduated and then taken the exam has passed it on their first try. The results of this study say we’re doing a fabulous job of training our students in the science of psychology,” Turley-Ames said.

For more information on Idaho State University’s Ph.D. program in clinical psychology visit http://www.isu.edu/psych/clinicalprogram.shtml.