Incorporating Evidence-Based Practices into Psychotherapy Training in Clinical Psychology PhD Programs

The movement toward empirical bases of psychotherapy has stirred significant controversy within the field of psychology, and professionals have formed strong and often conflicting opinions regarding the role that evidence-based practices should play in clinical decision making. Considering the powerful influence that clinical psychology training programs have in shaping their students' theoretical orientations, career pursuits, and attitudes toward the science-practice divide, it is surprising that there has been such little research conducted on the ways in which these programs have responded to the evidence-based practice movement. The goals of this study were to investigate relationships between training programs' emphasis on research or clinical work, geographic location, and incorporation of empirically supported treatments into training. While findings did not indicate any association between research emphasis and incorporation of empirically supported treatments into training, results revealed significant and surprising results with respect to geographic location. Findings revealed that programs in the Northeast had significantly higher faculty scholarly publication rates than did programs in the South, Midwest, and West. Furthermore, programs in the Northeast and West offered training in a wider variety of empirically supported treatments than did schools in the South and Midwest. Implications for future research and limitations are discussed.