Date of Award

5-2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department/Program

Psychology

Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair

Christopher King

Committee Member

Tarika Daftary-Kapur

Committee Member

Manual Gonzalez

Committee Member

Nicole Rafanello

Abstract

Police and public safety psychology (PPSP) entails assessment, intervention, operational support, and organizational consultation services rendered by psychologists to public safety agencies and personnel. In some ways, PPSP is a more recently recognized specialty area within health service psychology. While there have been occasional surveys of PPSP professionals in the past, relative to other specialty areas in health service psychology that share certain similarities with PPSP, such as forensic psychology and clinical neuropsychology, less is known about the experiences, broadly considered, of PPSP professionals and trainees. The current study sought to address this comparative gap in the literature by soliciting current PPSP professionals and trainees to complete a survey that was inspired by similar surveys that have recently been conducted with forensic psychology and clinical neuropsychology professionals and trainees. The survey sought information about general location within the United States and select demographic characteristics; discipline, education, training, and initial PPSP exposure experiences; trainees’ future plans in PPSP; funding and debt for training; licensure and board certification; duration, settings and locations, and work hours in PPSP; income and benefits in PPSP; PPSP services rendered; satisfaction and stress with PPSP work; views about the future and needs of PPSP as a subdiscipline; and retirement considerations. Results, largely based on information shared by professionals rather than trainees (very few of the latter constituency were successfully recruited), offer a contemporary snapshot of experiences within PPSP based on a reasonably sized sample of professional respondents, which might be cautiously generalized to the field of PPSP in the United States, and can inform both current professionals and potential future professionals in PPSP. Some results could be cautiously discussed in reference to the overall psychology workforce and the specialty areas of forensic psychology and clinical neuropsychology. Recommendations as to future directions stemming from this study largely center on education and training, and include additional efforts to (a) sample current trainees in PPSP for their insights, (b) ascertain the adequacy (variously defined) of the current PPSP workforce, and (c) further promote specialty training in PPSP at the predoctoral and early career levels.

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Psychology Commons

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