Chapter 24 



PERSONNEL RESOURCES FOR RESEARCH IN APPLIED 

 EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 



JOHN L. KENNEDY 

 Tufts College 



AND 



RUTH CRUIKSHANK BUSSEY 

 Washington, D. C. 



I. Introduction 



At the present time, any large-scale pro- 

 gram for work in experimental psychology 

 applied to the field of engineering design of 

 equipment for most efficient human use will 

 be severely handicapped by lack of trained 

 personnel at all levels. Those who have 

 been associated with the staffing of labora- 

 tories and field stations for this work will 

 testify that the important considerations are 

 not money, time, or facilities, but who can 

 be found to do the experimental work. It 

 will be the purpose of this paper to state 

 some facts concerning the current manpower 

 shortage in this specialty and to recommend 

 to those who are requesting further research 

 work in applied experimental psychology a 

 feasible program for insuring a steady supply 

 of trained personnel. 



II. Manpower estimate 



With the help of the records of the Amer- 

 ican Psychological Association Office in 

 Washington, D. C. and Drs. Dael Wolfle, 

 Executive Secretary of the APA, and Helen 

 Wolfle, Dr. Bussey has prepared Tables I 

 and II, showing the best estimates available 

 of the number of members and associates of 

 the APA who might have the training and 

 interest to work effectively. Since this sur- 

 vey is based upon the individual's own state- 

 ments as to his research and teaching 

 interests rather than on some more objec- 



tive criterion, it is probably true that the 

 frequencies are actually too high. 



The figures of Table I are based upon 

 information collected in 1945 and 1946. Ta- 

 ble I shows that a total of 1084 members 

 and associate members of the APA have 

 expressed interests in teaching or research 

 which might fit them for work in some phase 

 of applied experimental psychology. 



In Table II it is seen that, in 1945, ap- 

 proximately 26% of the membership of the 

 Association would possibly have been avail- 

 able, by training and interest, for military 

 applied experimental psychology. An es- 

 timate based upon a proportionate increase 

 in number of such individuals to the growth 

 of the Association (4183 in 1945 to 5009 in 

 1947) yields the number 1245, of possible 

 personnel to staff military projects. The 

 increase from 1084 to 1245 is probably spu- 

 rious, since the emphasis in recent years has 

 been on clinical rather than experimental 

 training and the new members of the Asso- 

 ciation have been drawn largely from the 

 clinical group. 



But, assuming that 1084 of the member- 

 ship of the Association represents a reason- 

 able figure for the number of experimentally- 

 trained psychologists, it is obvious that this 

 figure should be reduced by an unknown 

 number of persons who would be uninter- 

 ested in applied experimental psychology. 

 The full-time teaching staffs of departments 

 of psychology in universities and colleges 



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