PhD/PsyD APPIC Hours Inflation

[CompleteUnknown]

Hi all, I've been lurking on SDN for about 5 years (most heavily during the grad application process). Anyway, I got into a great PhD program and have now arrived at the internship process.

Something that troubles me, and that I want to get your opinion on, is the prevalence of inflating hours on the APPIC application. Some of the more competitive/intense people in my cohort talk about "stretching" hours as if it's a normal part of the hours-counting process (e.g., counting unsupervised, paid hours in a student life-type job as intervention hours). They imply that anyone NOT doing this is putting themselves at a disadvantage.

I know that I tend to be a pretty naive person -- how common of a practice is this? Have directors noticed increasing numbers of hours over the years (especially perhaps in light of the match crisis)? I am concerned that as hour-counts continue to artificially rise, the "average" will increase -- only leading to a greater pressure to "inflate" in order to be competitive.

Thoughts?

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[NeuroLady]

This may be an equally naive answer, but I'm not sure how someone could "stretch" their hours as you've described. For me to count a single intervention or assessment hour my supervisor would have to verify and sign off, then the professional training office for my program would have to verify the site and that the hours make sense and are in line with the signed contract, then the hours I enter on the APPI have to match those exactly. I hope there aren't many people "stretching" or that if they are the TD's can see right through it.

 

[Kadhir]

(e.g., counting unsupervised, paid hours in a student life-type job as intervention hours).

Well, that's just... lying. So I wouldn't do that. People do inflate hours or things like tests given, but they don't always do so knowingly, and I'm really not sure what it buys them in the end. I ran all my hour counts by my supervisors and of course had to have DCT approval on the AAPI, but I can't be sure how diligently they checked my work. An important thing to find out would be whether your colleagues were talking about face-to-face hours or trivial things like support hours. No one really cares about the latter.

We've never had a discussion about inflation in my program, so I assume most people have been within reasonable bounds or able to provide good justification for higher numbers. I'll also add that I come from a research-heavy program in which students typically clock in with a few hundred hours less than our PsyD counterparts, so theoretically, the incentive for us to inflate is higher. Again, has not come up for us AFAIK, but it's something to consider when determining how often this happens.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

I don't know how common it is, but it certainly happens. The good news, at least in my experiences, is that the overall hours counts (unless they're below a mandated minimum) typically aren't given very much weight. Possibly for this reason. There are a few exceptions, but those are mostly toward the negative (e.g., a very high intervention to supervision hours ratio, a very low number of face-to-face hours without something else to "show for it" such as increased research productivity, etc.). In all the internship ranking/selection committee meetings in which I've participated, never once has something equivalent to, "wow, that person has a lot of hours, let's interview them!" come up.

Ethically, knowingly inflating hours (even if "but everyone else is doing it!" is true) is wrong. And I would make the argument that there's really no need to bother doing it.

 

[nononora]

Training committees know that inflation happens... however, there isn't much weight placed on hours unless it's too low or too high. The number of clinical hours do not necessarily equate to clinical compentency unfortunately, especially at sites that are a bit more specialized in their treatment populations. Too few or too many hours may lead to you not being considered for an interview invite, but after being offered an interview, it is rare that your hours will have much of a say in how the site ranks you.

Different sites will, of course, handle it differently. I'm at a college counseling center on the East Coast.

 

[WisNeuro]

Hours are important up to a point, and then it's diminishing returns. Where the hours are accrued matters a lot more than how many hours are accrued. We're very skeptical of people with an insane amount of hours and I question applicants about them if they interview. Last, if a DCT knows about this and signs off on it, the DCT is risking disciplinary action by the APA. This didn't happen in my program, so I don't know how common it is.

 

[eremitestar]

Having been on both ends of the internship application process, I think sites are pretty savvy to this and know what to look out for. When I was interviewing for internships, I actually had an interviewer comment on the fact that my testing hours and number of integrated reports lined up. She thanked me for not inflating, which leads me to believe that the people whose numbers looked fishy were likely not rated as highly. As an application reviewer, I definitely saw some people stretching things, particularly in the domain of assessment. Whenever I saw someone with hundreds of testing hours who wasn't applying for the neuro track, I would look into it further. They were almost always counting intakes (clinical interview and a couple self-report measures), which wound up working against them in the long-run. I agree with those above in saying that trying to inflate your numbers really isn't worth it and has the potential to do more harm than good to your match prospects.

 

[MCParent]

We didn't inflate in my program. We had to keep the semesterly records, signed off by the supervisor of the site, and those had to add up to be the same as what we sent to APPIC. As WN said, any DCT not checking this is not doing their job. I suppose it is possible that some sites do systematically do this, though it would really be of minimal benefit as others said.

I think sometimes through a telephone-game-type thing, people talking about "estimating" gets turned into "inflating." You're allowed to estimate things; this isn't rocket science. Many prac sites don't operate on 50 minute hours, and participants are allowed to estimate out to how APPIC wants numbers reported, for example.

 

[WisNeuro]

I think sometimes through a telephone-game-type thing, people talking about "estimating" gets turned into "inflating." You're allowed to estimate things; this isn't rocket science. Many prac sites don't operate on 50 minute hours, and participants are allowed to estimate out to how APPIC wants numbers reported, for example.

Yes, estimating is just fine. As an assessment person, I wrote a lot of reports. I did not start and stop a stopwatch as I wrote those reports. Therapy hours should be a little easier because a lot of the time it's fairly standard, 50 minute hours, or 1.5 hours for exposure type things. But, charting and report writing are things that are fine to estimate.

 

[Pragma]

I will concur with others here - not ethical to do and not really anything to gain from it if you meet the minimums. I've heard of it before - people wanting to over-estimate their assessment hours, for instance. But ultimately things need to add up in terms of your number of reports, etc.

 

[smalltownpsych]

Hi all, I've been lurking on SDN for about 5 years (most heavily during the grad application process). Anyway, I got into a great PhD program and have now arrived at the internship process.

Something that troubles me, and that I want to get your opinion on, is the prevalence of inflating hours on the APPIC application. Some of the more competitive/intense people in my cohort talk about "stretching" hours as if it's a normal part of the hours-counting process (e.g., counting unsupervised, paid hours in a student life-type job as intervention hours). They imply that anyone NOT doing this is putting themselves at a disadvantage.

I know that I tend to be a pretty naive person -- how common of a practice is this? Have directors noticed increasing numbers of hours over the years (especially perhaps in light of the match crisis)? I am concerned that as hour-counts continue to artificially rise, the "average" will increase -- only leading to a greater pressure to "inflate" in order to be competitive.

Thoughts?

The main reason someone would encourage you to "stretch hours" is because they know that they are doing something wrong and trying to get other people involved so that they can use the "everybody else does it" rationalization. Psychologists should maintain the highest ethical standards in reporting information of all types including research data, testimony in court, assessment reports, chart notes, and ..... internship applications.

 

[temppsych123]

I am very familiar with the application process at two very different programs (both PhD programs) because of my own application process at my program and friends in another program who applied at the same time. At my program, you submit an hours record for each placement you complete that your supervisor signs off on (as you go through the program), and those hours need to be very close to the total you put on the AAPI (our DCT wouldn't argue if the difference was minor, but anything substantive you had to justify and go back and get approval from your clinical supervisor). At my friends' program, no such process existed, and so the DCT basically took students' word for how many hours they said they completed. In neither case did I know of anyone who was intentionally inflating their numbers. I would recommend against doing so, both ethically and because the consequences if you are found lying on the AAPI could be severe.

 

[deleted343839]

I can't think of a realistic situation where padding your estimates would have an obvious payoff. Since there's not a clear line between generous overestimating and falsifying, the risk of doing this far outweighs any hypothetical benefit.

Smalltownpsych made a great point about how people justify their own sketchy behavior by claiming it happens more often than it really does.

 

[DrMikeP]

It unfortunately happens, but internship directors do look for the hours to make sense. For example, it is extremely rare for someone to put in over 20 hrs at practicum a week and carry a full course load w/ full ec's. If that happens for 2 or 3 yrs in a row there is almost always a problem and the person gets questioned extensively. Also, you aren't typically spending 80% of practicum time in face-to-face contact and 20% in supervision or only have 3 patients yet 10 contact hours/wk avg. There are other clues internship sites watch for but I won't post them here. I am ok with rounding to the nearest hour vs trying to keep up with adding patient hours down to the minute 55, 53, 62, 51, 58....... If you see 5 pts for full sessions then imo it's ok to say 5hrs.

I was honest in my hours but some weren't. I still ended up at an excellent site and not too shabby of a career, so be honest and work hard and given a little luck things will work out.

 

[CompleteUnknown]

...At my friends' program, no such process existed, and so the DCT basically took students' word for how many hours they said they completed...

Yes, this is exactly the case in my program.

 

[CompleteUnknown]

Thanks for the honest feedback, everyone. I appreciate the insights from the director's end! It's comforting to hear that hours are not the be-all-end-all and that fishy things look, well, fishy.

The students that seemed to be involved in this are some of my program's "golden children" and so I worry that they will continue to dazzle potential supervisors without being held accountable. It honestly irks me, but this isn't the place for rants about fellow students. Thanks again for your thoughts!

 

[Ollie123]

We had virtually no safeguards in place and it was up to the student to track their hours, though obviously our DCT had to sign off and would say something if the numbers didn't seem realistic based on their practica.

I'm sure if we did a formal study, results would suggest that people err on the side of "rounding up" whenever possible, but I don't think outright fabrication of hours is a common occurrence. Tracking hours perfectly would be tremendously burdensome and just not worth the time of a typical grad student, so there is a lot of estimation built in. I suspect this is more along the lines of "Were those groups usually 1.5 hours or 2? I'll just put 2...". Per the instructions when I was applying, its arguable that is even expressly permitted. My (and I suspect most people's) support hours calculation was probably no more accurate than it would have been if I just threw a dart at a dartboard while blindfolded, but I don't know that anyone gives the slightest crap about them anyways. No one gets an internship because they spent 5 hours carefully refining every progress note.

I wouldn't worry about it. A few publications will get you much further than an extra 500 hours once you pass whatever magic number exists for the sites you are considering (typically ~500, sometimes 1000). Almost everyone applies with "enough" hours and they don't mean much beyond that. Its kind of like a GPA for grad school. Yes, if you apply with a 2.0 you are probably not getting in. Most serious candidates are within the 3.5-4.0 range and a 3.5 with better experience beats the 4.0 candidate every single time.