Assessing Scientist and Practitioner Orientations in Industrial/Organizational Psychology

Abstract

This research develops and provides initial evidence of internal validity for a measure of scientist and practitioner orientations in industrial/organizational psychology (the SPI-IO). The application of this measure has various potential benefits, including the ability to measure students' needs, guide their development, and understand the influence of training on their career interests over time. We used the O*Net database to draw information regarding what critical work tasks are performed by industrial/organizational (I/O) psychologists --these work tasks were used to build items for the practitioner scale of the SPI-IO. Leong and Zachar developed a scientist scale for an earlier version of the SPI used to assess career orientations in counseling and clinical psychology. The scientist scale is composed of items that are also relevant for I/O psychology. Together, Leong and Zachar's scientist scale and our newly developed practitioner scale comprise the SPI-IO. In Study 1, we used the SPI-IO to measure career orientations in undergraduates and found support for the measure's construct validity. In Study 2, we assessed career orientations in I/O psychology graduate students. With the graduate sample, we sought to again support the SPI-IO's validity and also to determine whether the SPI-IO could account for more variance in career specialty choice (i.e., science vs. practice) than more general measures of career interests (i.e., RIASEC). In all cases, the validity and unique predictive utility of the SPI-IO was confirmed. In addition to reviewing these results in detail, we provide a copy of the SPI-IO and discuss its implications for use.