Specialization Designation

Professional psychology as a field includes rigorous training covering a broad range of competencies, often within the domain of a specified course of study such as clinical psychology, counseling psychology, school psychology, or another area. Due to a variety of factors, an increasing focus on competency-based training and recognition of specialty training, with accompanying board certification in that specialty, has evolved within the field. As a result, more psychologists seek board certification as a means of demonstrating competency in a specific area of specialization.

Within professional psychology, specialty areas are defined areas of practice or service addressing specific problems and populations. Specialty practice requires advanced knowledge, skills, and attitudes that have been acquired in addition to the more broad, general knowledge and training that serves as a foundation for professional psychology.

Specialization may begin during graduate training, yet it continues well beyond completion of the doctoral degree program. It is following several years of graduate study, completion of internship, and postdoctoral training that one becomes eligible to sit for the Examination for the Professional Practice of Psychology (EPPP) leading to licensure for practice within the profession. In most jurisdictions, that licensure is granted as a generic license to practice within the scope of one's training. Thus, licensure as a psychologist, in and of itself, is not considered recognition of specialization. Recognition of specialty in a specific area of psychology is generally made through a board certification process, most often under the processes established and conducted by the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP).