The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist. Overview of the 2015 Practitioner Needs Survey. Executive Summary. This article is an introduction to a series of TIP ...
Overview of the 2015 Practitioner Needs Survey Executive Summary This article is an introduction to a series of TIP articles reporting on the results of the 2015 Practitioner Needs Survey that the Professional Practice Committee (PPC) conducted in March/April 2015. In this overview, we present the content of the survey and its purpose, as well as deliver information about the survey participants and the results of one of the primary questions comprising the survey.
Joy Oliver SRA International, INC. Meredith Ferro PDRI, a CEB Company Cole Napper CenturyLink Ben Porr Federal Management Partners
We intend to present the results in a series of articles focusing on: (a) efforts SIOP has made or could make to aid practitioners in their professional development; (b) research priorities for practitioners; and, (c) licensing issues. In each of the subsequent articles, we will present the quantitative results from the survey, as well as some qualitative feedback on specific questions where we feel it will provide additional insight into the survey responses. We intend these articles to provide information to SIOP on practitioner needs, as well as highlight progress that SIOP has made in addressing practitioner needs since the 2008 survey. In addition, we hope that in identifying high priority areas of practice requiring additional research, we can improve collaboration between I-Os working in different practice areas. Introduction Recently, the PPC fielded a survey to the SIOP professional membership on practitioner needs. This survey was a follow-up to the 2008 survey, which focused primarily on: (a) practitioner satisfaction with SIOP, (b) professional development of practitioners, (c) promotion of I-O psychology, and (d) licensing issues. Silzer and colleagues (see references for a complete list of studies that specifically reference the 2008 practitioner needs survey data) presented the results of the 2008 survey in a
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series of TIP articles between 2008 and 2011. As a result of the 2008 survey findings, the PPC identified multiple projects to pursue to support professional practice and practitioners. These projects include the following efforts: • Speed Mentoring/Group Mentoring: Members of the PPC conduct a speed mentoring event at the annual SIOP conference and support virtual group mentoring throughout the year. • Practitioner Reviewer Database: In cooperation with the SIOP administrative office, the PPC is designing a database of practitioners interested in serving as reviewers for journals. The PPC will survey members and gather information about the credentials of interested practitioners and will assemble this information into a searchable database. • Webinars project: The PPC recruited SIOP members to record a series of webinars to educate practitioners on “hot” topics for I-O professionals. More webinars are planned for future recording. • SIOP–SHRM Educational Series: The PPC provides support for the SIOP/ SHRM collaboration to highlight evidence-based management practices for the SHRM community, including a white paper series in which SHRM suggests topics of interest to HR professionals, SIOP recruits authors to write papers on given topics, and SIOP and SHRM work collaboratively to review and publish white papers; and, an article series called the Research Insight Series, which is aligned with SHRM content areas, of research findings that have been impactful and relevant to the practice of I-O. 50
• Careers Study: In partnership with the Center for Organizational Research (COR) at the University of Akron, the PPC collected data via focus groups and surveys on the competencies and the critical experiences that describe career levels within four largest practice areas in I-O psychology. The follow-on work in this project will include additional practice areas, as well as identifying developmental experiences that best prepare I-O psychologists for the next step in their career. • Business Acumen Competency Model Project: Members of the PPC are developing and validating a model of nontechnical competencies related to business acumen (e.g., sales, marketing, financial concepts) required for success by practitioners. The results of this study will be presented to SIOP membership in various educational formats (e.g., pre-conference workshop, practitioner consortium, conference sessions). • EBSCO Research Access: Members of the PPC will design and administer a survey on satisfaction with SIOP’s Research Access to determine potential resources and actions needed to enhance utilization from SIOP members. The 2008 survey was groundbreaking for SIOP and for the PPC in many ways, as it focused our committee’s outreach agenda for many years subsequent to the fielding of the survey. In an effort to continue to respond to the needs of the practice community, we conducted the 2015 Practitioner Needs Survey. The objective of this survey was to gather information for comparison July 2015, Volume 53, Number 1
with the 2008 survey, as well as to provide to SIOP, the PPC, and related committees (e.g., Licensure and Visibility to name a few) with information about practitioner needs. Survey Design and Administration A core survey development team, led by Mark Poteet (current chair of PPC) and Joy Oliver including Meredith Ferro, Cole Napper, and Ben Porr, worked on the development of items for the 2015 survey in consultation with members of the 2008 survey development team. We made some small changes to the 2008 survey. We changed content in the following areas: (a) we adjusted questions informed by other projects in progress (e.g., the Careers Study of 2013 collected information on competencies and experiences of different I-O practice areas, so we eliminated the set of questions from the 2008 survey); (b) we removed potential development activities that SIOP could offer if they are currently being offered through the PPC (e.g., the webinars project is currently in its second year, so we removed it as a potential resource SIOP could offer); and (c) we refocused the questions on science–practice gaps to address whether the practice area needed more research and whether it was a priority so that we can provide the
SIOP research community with a prioritized list of research areas. We made this change specifically to provide information to the research community of SIOP to improve collaboration among SIOP membership. With respect to the differences between the 2015 and 2008 survey, the primary weakness of the 2015 survey is the response rate. The 2008 survey reported a 36% response rate; the 2015 survey received only 469 valid responses, for a response rate of 10%. We understand that the messaging around the 2015 survey was confusing to some potential participants regarding whether they should participate, and that the timing (the survey launched right before the SIOP annual conference) was not ideal. The PPC will improve the advertisement and timing of future surveys by working with the SIOP Administrative Office so that the results of future Practitioner Needs Surveys are representative of the SIOP population. Survey Respondents Table 1 depicts the characteristics of the study participants. As evident, the survey respondents were primarily SIOP members (n = 279; 59.5%). More than 70 participants did not report their membership status, indicating that these individuals opted out of
Table 1 SIOP Practitioner Needs Survey Respondents by SIOP Membership Status Associate Member Fellow International Affiliate Member Did not report Total (Associates, Members, & Fellows)
Frequency 71 31 9 279 79
Percent of 2015 sample 15% 7% 2% 60% 17%
2015 response rate 8% 10% 2% 10% N/A
2008 response rate 44% 31% 17% 35% N/A
469
100%
10%
36%
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completing the survey, as this item required a response in order to progress in the survey. Of the survey respondents, more than 60% had PhDs (n = 306; 65.2%). This percentage is far lower than reported in 2008, in which 84% of respondents reported PhD as their highest degree. We are unable to determine whether this is due to changing membership status within SIOP or to the differing response rates between the 2008 and 2015 survey. The most common degree indicated by participants was in I-O psychology (n = 348; 74.2%), with 7% indicating their degree in other psychology, and 17% indicating no response. Similar to the question on membership status, participants were required to answer this question before advancing in the survey. Thus, the missing respondents terminated their participation in this survey prior to receiving this question. The largest percent of respondents worked in consulting firms (n = 125; 27%; see Table 2). This percentage is similar to 2008,
in which 26% of respondents worked in consulting firms. The largest difference in employment setting between the 2008 and 2015 survey was for academic institutions; 25% of respondents to the 2008 survey worked in academic institutions, while only 8% of the 2015 survey participants worked in academic institutions. We are unsure whether this change in response rate is due to the timing of the survey or the name of the survey (i.e., the title, Practitioners Needs, may have led some academics to believe that this survey was not relevant to them). Similar to 2008, the largest proportion of respondents worked in large organizations of over 10,000 employees (n = 129; 27.5%) and worked in organizations with between 2-5 I-O psychologists (n = 108; 23.0%). Of the reported positions within organizations, more than 35% of respondents indicated that they were individual contributors. However, only 6% of respondents listed their position as professor (see Table 3).
Table 2 SIOP Practitioner Needs Survey Respondents by Employment Setting Academic institution Consulting firm Independent practice Military service Non‐profit organization Private sector business Public sector organization (e.g., government agency) Did not report Total
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Frequency 38 125 52 1 26 112 35 80
2008 Percent 25% 26% 11% N/A 4% 19% 11% 4%
2015 Percent 8% 27% 11%
