Impact of research training environment and Holland personality type: A 15-year follow-up of research productivity.

Abstract

Ratings of the research training environment (RTE) and Holland personality type from 325 counseling psychology students who participated in G. M. Royalty, C. J. Gelso, B. Mallinckrodt, and K. Garrett’s (1986) study were examined as predictors of the students’ research productivity 15 years later. Graduates’ research productivity was determined by a search of the PsycLIT database. Results indicated that 2 specific RTE elements were related to productivity for men (faculty modeling and science as a partly social experience) together with the Interpersonal cluster of elements and the total RTE. Only 1 RTE element was related to productivity for women (untying statistics from research). Investigative Holland type was related to productivity for the combined sample of men and women. At a program level, Interpersonal and Instructional RTE ingredients distinguished programs whose graduates had sustained low, moderate, or high levels of research productivity. An important goal of psychology programs that ascribe to the scientist–practitioner training model is to produce doctoral graduates who are interested in research as well as practice and who are able to integrate science and practice into a body of skills, knowledge, and professional attitudes that is greater than the sum of these two parts (Belar, 2000). Gelso and Fretz (2001) suggested that successful scientist–practitioner training is manifested at three ordinal levels: (a) the ability to critically review research produced by others; (b) the ability to apply the rigorous logic of the scientific method to practice activities such as diagnosis, treatment planning, and evaluating the effectiveness of one’s work; and (c) at the highest level, the ability to actually produce scholarly work. Thus, whether the outcome of training is defined in the most demanding terms of producing original scholarship or less rigorously in terms of critical thinking skills, all three levels involve an interest in research and positive attitude toward scholarly activity.