Evaluating the impact of clinical psychology training programs: Process and outcome issues.

Abstract

These comments identify key issues that need to be resolved to evaluate the impact or achievement of graduate training programs in clinical psychology. Three questions ought to be addressed to evaluate impact empirically: (1) What is a given training program trying to accomplish; that is, what are the goals? (2) What features of the program are designed to contribute to these goals; that is, what are the means? and (3) How can the goals and the means be assessed to elaborate their connections? Evaluating training programs is not fundamentally different from other research and begins with a careful analysis of the constructs of interest (e.g., program goals), identification of measures of the goals and the means, and considering, ruling out, or making implausible the influence of other factors (e.g., student selection, faculty selection, curriculum) that, if not conceived of as part of training, could serve as confounds.