Research productivity and academic lineage in clinical psychology: who is training the faculty to do research?

This study examined the research productivity of graduates of American Psychological Association accredited, clinical psychology doctoral programs who currently hold faculty positions. Normative averages of aggregated publications over the 2000-2004 five-year period were computed. Rankings based on the mean number of publications produced by graduates of each training program and the number of graduates were significantly correlated with U.S. News and World Report rankings, although some important differences were noted. Programs that have produced a larger number of faculty members were also more highly ranked but there was increased variability for the number of publications produced by the larger numbers of graduates. Objective outcome analyses such as graduates' publications may be preferable to more subjective reputation rankings of programs. Particularly for scientist-practitioner and clinical-scientist training programs, outcome data such as graduates' publications is an important aspect of the programs' continued self-study.