What Criteria Define a Successful Career in Psychology? it Depends on Who you Ask

Abstract

Predicting which students have the ability and motivation to become successful psychologists is an endeavor that all graduate psychology departments undertake to some degree. However, before prediction of "success" in psychology can take place, it is first necessary to develop what the important criteria of success in psychology are. For this purpose, the importance of various criteria of academic success in psychology was rated during three different stages of career development. From two universities, 71 faculty and graduate students were surveyed. Results from a series of principle component analyses using orthogonal and oblique rotation methods strongly suggested that there are a relatively large number of factors that are important. A nine-factor solution seemed to provide the best fit to the data, both in terms of conceptual consistency and variance explained. This solution indicated that there is wide diversity of opinion among psychologists as to what are the most important criteria of success in psychology. Such results suggest that the predictive validity of screening devices should be investigated using broader outcome criteria than have been commonly used in the past.