Datapoint: Psychology degrees build useful skills
News on psychologists' education and employment from APA's Center for Workforce Studies (CWS)
Vol. 50, No. 11
Print version: page 19
A psychology education offers more than a deep grounding in a specific area of psychology; it also develops communication, cognitive, social and other skills that are highly desirable at work.1 An analysis of occupational profiles found that among jobs that require a high amount of "psychology knowledge"2—such as psychologists, nurses and human factors engineers—those additional skills are also important.3
The analysis found that:
- The most important skills used in these jobs were active listening and speaking, followed closely by critical thinking and reading comprehension.
- These skills were important in jobs across all education levels, from those that require bachelor’s degrees to those that require master’s, doctorate and postdoctorate education. The top skills are slightly more important in jobs that require higher levels of education and more experience.
Graph depicting the importance of certain skills in psychology-related jobs.
Want more information? See CWS’s interactive data tools: www.apa.org/workforce/data-tools/index or contact cws@apa.org.
1Naufel, K.Z., et al. (2018). The skillful psychology student: Prepared for success in the 21st century workplace. Retrieved from: https://www.apa.org/careers/resources/guides/transferable-skills.pdfopens in new window.
2"Psychology knowledge" is defined by O*NET as "knowledge of human behavior and performance; individual differences in ability, personality, and interests; learning and motivation; psychological research methods; and the assessment and treatment of behavioral and affective disorders."
3Analysis was performed using O*NET’s occupational profiles. O*NET is a database of worker attributes and job characteristics for 1,110 occupations. For more information, see www.onetonline.org.opens in new window Occupations with high importance of psychology knowledge were defined as occupations with an importance rating equal to or greater than the mean rating across all occupations (2.38). Importance of skills was rated on a scale of 1 (not important) to 5 (extremely important). For documentation on these variables, see www.onetonline.org/link/summary/19-3031.02opens in new window.