This study looks at how many and what types of undergraduate students are interested in a broad range of academic and occupational fields related to psychology. Specific and detailed data sets address many particular fields such as cognitive psychology, psychiatry, industrial psychology, clinical psychology, child psychology/counseling, social work and many other areas. Academic planners can pinpoint interest in particular fields by specific student demographics. Which areas of psychology are preferred by men? By women? Which fields most interest students from the highest or lowest income brackets? Which fields most appeal to students raised abroad or those raised in the US West or US South? In which fields are African American or Asian American students most interested?
Hundreds of tables of data relating to interest in particular fields of psychology enable higher education leaders to focus programs on actual student demand. One data set looks specifically at graduate school intentions.
Data in this 200+ page reports is based on a representative survey of 1289 undergraduate students at 4-year colleges in the USA.
Just a few of this report’s many findings are that:
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African American and mixed race students were particularly interested and more than 39% of the former and nearly 41% of the latter expressed significant levels of interest in programs in psychology.
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33% of women but only 21% of men were interested or highly interested in coursework in social psychology.
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Students from a Lutheran or Mormon religious background were the most interested in pursuing psychotherapy.
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25% of students living in fraternities or sororities were interested or highly interested in forensic psychology.
The data is broken out by many variables, including but not limited to, race/ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, family income level, academic major, religion, housing situation, geographic origins, SAT/ACT scores, college grades and other personal variables. Data is also broken out by institutional variables such as college enrollment size, public/private status, tuition level, and Carnegie class or type of college.
This is a critical resource for deans, department heads and other policy makers in departments of psychology, psychiatry and social work, enabling them to focus on the students most interested in education and careers in psychology and related areas.