| Abstract: | Research on preference for the scientist and practitioner roles in psychology has focused mainly on professionals and graduate students. The current study focused on undergraduates in a formative stage of career development to determine whether scientist and practitioner preferences could be indentified using instrumentation such as the Scientist-Practitioner Inventory (Leong & Zachar, Journal of Counseling Psychology, 38, 331- 341, 1991). The results indicated that comprehension of terminology within the field may affect students' indication of preference and that the divergence of preference seen in studies using professionals and graduate students does nto exist among undergraduate students. These finding could be due to a lacak of comprehension of terminology used to determine preferences. The need for an instrument that accurately measures undergraduate preferences for scientist and practitioner activities is clearly indicated to determine scientist or practitioner role preferences. |
