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Presented at the 1990 annual meeting of the American Psychological Society, Dallas, TX

A National Survey of Requirements for the Psychology Major

Anthony Golden and Denise Squire
PACAT/Department of Psychology
Austin Peay State University
Clarksville, TN 37044

In 1979, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) began the Academic Program Evaluation Project (Ostar, 1986). In the same year, the Tennessee Higher Education Commission introduced performance funding to encourage the evaluation and improvement of academic programs (Rudolph & Nixon, 1986). A 1984 report from the National Institute of Education supported the use of assessment to determine whether or not educational goals were being met. According to Ewell, et al. (1990) 83% of the states have or are considering higher education assessment mandates or initiatives. Furthermore, regional accrediting agencies now are required to include outcomes assessment to receive federal recognition.

Assessment of graduating seniors in colleges and universities has turned its focus towards the major with an emphasis on curricular evaluation and development (Marchese, 1989). The combination of the measurement of student learning with the evaluation of institutional priorities and curricula, has created a need for specialized measurement models and instruments. Because an instrument intended to evaluate both students and curricula must reflect the goals of the individual department, nationally standardized tests have proven to be largely unsatisfactory. Erwin (1989) has suggested that department goals should be established and that these should be used to produce an appropriate method for assessing the major.

In order to determine the content most appropriate for the ACAT instrument, PACAT conducted a survey of psychology departments at public and private post-secondary institutions. The surveys requested information concerning the role of various content areas in the curriculum of the major. The results have been used to isolate common patterns of curricular offerings and requirements, identified by content area rather than course.

Sample

Between October 1988 and January 1990, surveys were sent to 1,148 departments of psychology in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands which were listed by the College Entrance Examination Board (Index of Majors, 1988) as offering 4 year baccalaureate degrees with a major in Psychology. Completed surveys were received from 598 (52%) of the departments. Multiple surveys submitted by departments with multiple "tracks" increased the total number of surveys received to 650. Forty-five surveys from 36 departments were dropped either because they were blank or were incorrectly completed. The data from the remaining 605 surveys are included in the present study.

Instrument

The survey was constructed using 10 randomly selected college and university catalogs and comparing the descriptions of courses required for a major in psychology. A total of 21 content areas were identified and included on the survey. Participants were asked to indicate, for each area, whether it was required, part of a list of options, or counted as an elective within their major. In addition, they were asked to indicate whether the content area was presented as a separate course, as one of several major topics within a course, or both. A write-in area was provided for the inclusion of content areas which did not appear on the instrument. Respondents were asked not to include content areas taught only in introductory level survey courses.

Results

The survey responses were tallied and each content area was coded according to the position it occupied within the structure of the individual major. Six categories of response were used with a seventh, "not offered," for content areas which either were unmarked or marked incorrectly (see Table 1). The "write-in" content areas also were grouped into categories where possible and tallied.

The coded responses were subjected to the SPSS-X Quick Cluster routine which grouped them into initial "proto-curricula." These content area "proto-curricula" were refined to individual curricular models with a fixed content area core and a predetermined number of areas selected from a list of options. Responding departments then were tested individually to determine the degree to which they matched each curricular model and were grouped accordingly. The more complex curricula were identified first and departments which matched them were not included in the determination of subsequent, less complex patterns. For content areas in the core, a department was considered to match the curricular pattern if it required 80% of the content areas with more than half being taught as separate courses. For the optional areas, a department met the criterion if it required 80% of the minimum number of optional content areas with more than half being taught as separate courses. Eight curricular patterns finally were identified which could account for 573 of the 605 interpretable surveys (see Table 2).

VARIMAX rotation factor analysis (SPSS-X) also was performed on the data to determine whether or not the responses would produce logically consistent factors. Although not necessarily appropriate for the design of assessment instruments, the results of this analysis (see Table 3) suggest that the surveys were sufficiently sensitive for the purpose of identifying curricular patterns.

DISCUSSION

The response rate of 562 departments out of the 1,148 surveyed in 1989-90 (49%) has provided a very adequate national sample. The overall total of 605 surveys received suggests that approximately 8% of Psychology departments offer multiple tracks through the major.

As would be expected, two content areas stand out as more or less universal requirements: statistics and experimental design. In addition, a distinct group of content areas appears to serve as options beyond this core: abnormal; life span development; history and systems; human learning and cognition; personality; physiological; social. The division of responding departments into eight distinctive curricular patterns, however, argues against making a single broad generalization from the overall survey findings. None of the curricular patterns precisely matches the list of areas above, the closest being pattern A which would match only 136 of the 605 responding departments.

The findings of this survey and the requests by participating departments for different curricular versions of the ACAT support the contention that a single instrument is inappropriate for the assessment of graduating seniors in psychology. The findings also suggest that the data collected by surveys of psychology departments should be interpreted cautiously to insure adequate representation of curricular diversity.

REFERENCES

Erwin, T. (1989, June). Assessment in the major: Questions and answers. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Association for Higher Education, Atlanta, GA.

Ewell, P., Finney, J., and Lenth, C. (1990). Filling in the mosaic: The emerging pattern of state-based assessment. Bulletin of the American Association for Higher Education, 42 (8), 3-5.

Index of majors, 1988-89. (1988). New York: College Board Publications.

Ostar, A. (1986). Foreword. In K. McGuinness (Ed.), Legislative action & assessment: Reason & reality. Washington, DC: American Association of State Colleges and Universities. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 293 387).

Rudolph, L., and Nixon, J. (1986). Evaluation for excellence: The Tennessee Plan. In K. McGuinness (Ed.), Legislative action & assessment: Reason & reality (pp. 273-279. Washington, DC: American Association of State Colleges and Universities. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 293 387).

Schneider, C. (1989, June). Remarks. In T. Marchese (Chair), First things first: Identifying and assessing outcomes of the major. Symposium conducted at the meeting of the American Association for Higher Education, Atlanta, GA.

TABLE 1: TALLY OF CONTENT AREAS INCLUDED IN SURVEY

TABLE 2: PACAT PSYCHOLOGY CURRICULAR PATTERNS

TABLE 3: FACTOR ANALYSIS OF WEIGHTED RESPONSES