What is I-O?

Since the inception of I-O psychology, there has been a debate about whether the field is best described in terms of science or practice (Landy, 1992). The debate has been fueled by the academic camp which emphasizes the importance of scientific rigor versus the applied camp which emphasizes the need for research to be useful in everyday workplace settings. Evidence that the debate continues to take place can be found when investigating the presidential addresses at the last 12 Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychology Conferencesfour specifically address the science and practice gap (Landy, 1991; Klimoski, 1992; Sackett, 1994; Farr, 1997).

Hyatt, Cropanzano, Finfer, Levy, Ruddy, Vandaveer, and Walker (1997) provided an excellent overview of the state of affairs regarding the science-practice gap. Their review stemmed from a session at the 1997 SIOP Conference in St. Louis and provides a number of useful suggestions. In their article, Hyatt et al. stated that there is evidence of growing collaboration between scientists and practitioners. In the current study, we attempted to empirically test this statement, as well as to provide suggestions for continuing to reduce the science-practice gap.

We used SIOP Conference programs to examine whether or not change in the science-practice gap has occurred in the last dozen years. More so than any other event, the SIOP Annual Conference provides an opportunity for I-O psychologists from all backgrounds to gather and discuss the field of I-O psychology. Scientists and practitioners alike flock to the Conference to exchange ideas in a variety of formal (e.g., symposia, poster sessions, roundtables) and informal (e.g., coffee breaks, conversation hours, happy hours) sessions.

While there is little one can do to analyze the content and participation of the informal sessions, there are a number of ways to do so with the formal sessions. Although an investigation of the content of formal SIOP presentations might be possible from a review of the presentation titles, a science-practice interpretation is difficult using only the title and authorship information. Author affiliation information is available and can be used as a proxy for whether the participant is a scientist or practitioner, thus allowing for a reasonable test for scientist and practitioner participation.

Given that historically, academics have comprised the majority of participants at conferences such as SIOP, one sign of a shrinking science-practice gap would be a significant increase in the conference participation rate of practitioners. A higher percentage of practitioners in 1999 would suggest that perhaps I-O psychologists are listening and are addressing the concerns regarding a science-practice gap.

However, a higher practitioner participation rate in 1999 is meaningful only if there is evidence that the composition of SIOP itself has not changed dramatically from 1988 to 1999. For example, a 10% higher practitioner participation rate in 1999 is less meaningful if the practitioner composition of SIOP itself has increased 30% during this same time period. Unfortunately, we did not have access to the primary employment setting of SIOP members from 1988 and 1999 specifically. However, we did have access to Howards (1990) and OConnor and Ryans (1996) membership surveys. We considered the 1990 results (data were collected in 1989) as a proxy for the 1988 Conference, and the 1996 results (data were collected in 1995) as a surrogate for the 1999 Conference. The percentage of respondents who indicated that their primary employment setting was applied (nonacademic) was 64% in 1990 and 61% in 1996. While these percentages represent only those SIOP members who responded to the survey, due to the high response rates (80% in 1990 and 77.9% in 1996), it is likely that the numbers reflect an accurate snapshot of the SIOP membership.

Hypothesis 1: The SIOP Conference participation rates for practitioners, as measured by rate of program participation, will be greater in 1999 than in 1988.

The definition of a gap implies a separation between two thingsin this case, scientist and practitioner. A collaboration of ideas, styles, and interests between scientist and practitioner would indicate that a gap is being bridged. One way to examine the degree of collaboration between I-O scientists and practitioners is to investigate the presentations at the SIOP Conferences. To the extent that I-O psychologists from academia and business are jointly involved in symposia, posters, roundtables, and panel discussions provides evidence of collaboration. Higher joint participation rates at the 1999 Conference compared to the 1988 Conference indicate greater collaboration and, perhaps, a shrinking of the science-practice gap.

Hypothesis 2: There will be significantly more sessions in which scientists and practitioners collaborated in 1999 than in 1988.

Method

The data necessary to test the hypotheses were drawn from 2 years of SIOP Conference programs (1988 and 1999). The 1988 Conference held in Dallas, was the third annual meeting. We chose this Conference as the base because by the third year SIOP members were likely to be familiar with the content, format, and time of the year that the Conference was held, along with the submission policies. The 1999 Conference was located in Atlanta, and was chosen because it was the Conference with the most current information available (at the time of the research). Together, the two Conferences span a 12-year period.

Data were collected by manually examining both the 1988 and 1999 programs and recording specific pieces of information about program participants in the following session types: symposia, poster sessions, roundtables, and panel discussions. Only those four session types were included for several reasons. First, these four types of sessions comprise the backbone of the SIOP program. Second, each of these types of sessions was represented at both the 1988 and 1999 Conferences. No other type of session was present at both Conferences. The information that was recorded for each session included the following: session number (identification code), number of academic participants in a session, number of practitioners in a session, the total number of people in the session, the type of session, and the year of the session.

An example of how the data were coded follows. A poster presentation at the 1999 Conference with 3 authors, one from Ford Motor, one from Aon Consulting, and one from Michigan State University would get coded as a poster, as 1 academic, 2 practitioners, 3 total participants, and the composition of the group would be both academics and practitioners.

For purposes of this analysis, those participants who were affiliated with a university were classified as scientists, while those affiliated with some other type of institution were classified as practitioners. This is, of course, an imperfect method of determining whether or not someone is a scientist or a practitioner. However, given the scope of this analysis, as well as the historical precedence for this type of classification scheme, we believed that such a distinction was justifiable.

Results

Clearly, the SIOP Conference has experienced tremendous growth. There were 92 presentations given at the 1988 Conference, and nearly 5 times more presentations, 441 at the 1999 Conference. There were 332 authors/presenters associated with the 92 presentations in 1988 and 2,026 associated with the 441 presentations in 1999. Regardless of whether the gap between science and practice is shrinking or expanding, the Conference itself is thriving.

First, we examined the distribution of session types (i.e., symposia, poster sessions, roundtables, and panel discussions). Figures 1a and 1b display the distribution of the four primary session types. The results of a chi-squared (c²₍₂₎ = 10.01, p < .05) indicate a change from 1988 to 1999 in distribution of session types. The data indicate a significant increase in the number of poster presentations from 1988 to 1999 (54.3% vs. 71.2%). While this increase has come at the expense of each of the three other groups, the decrease in symposia from 1988 to 1999 (34.8% vs. 21.8%) contributes most significantly to the chi-squared.

The first hypothesis predicted a significant increase in the participation rates of practitioners from 1988 to 1999 (See Figure 2.) In 1988 there were 64 practitioner participants at the SIOP Conference. This number represented just under 20% of the total participants (n = 332). Practitioners accounted for 472 of the 2,026 participants in the 1999 Conference (23.3%). This difference represents a 20.8% increase in the practitioner participation rate (z = 1.70, p < .05). This shift supports the first hypothesis and indicates progress in terms of practitioner participation.

The second hypothesis stated that there were significantly more sessions in which scientists and practitioners collaborated in 1999 than there were in 1988. A chi-squared, tested for all four session types combined, indicated significant differences in the composition rates from 1988 to 1999 (c²₍₂₎ = 6.65, p < .05). The increase for sessions with both academics and practitioners contributed most to the significant chi-squared. The participation rate for those sessions in which academics and practitioners worked together increased from 18.48% of the sessions in 1988 to 31.75% of the sessions in 1999.

Next, we tested for each session type individually. Figure 3 shows participation rates for symposia. Results of a chi-squared test indicated that the composition patterns for symposia were significantly different in 1988 versus 1999 (c²₍₂₎ = 12.65, p < .01). The results of the chi-squared indicate a high number of academic only symposia in 1988 and a significantly higher rate of symposia with both academics and practitioners in 1999. Interestingly, the rate of practitioner-only symposia stayed fairly constant across the 12-year span (less than 10% in both years).

Chi-squared tests for poster sessions, panel discussions, and roundtables were not significant (c²₍₂₎ = 4.04, 1.01, and 2.85 respectively). While an analysis of these data suggest a trend toward increased cooperation from scientists and practitioners in these three areas, the trend is not statistically significant. The power to detect differences in composition rates over time was severely hampered when investigating panel discussions and roundtables, due to very small sample sizes for these types of sessions.

In addition to discovering evidence of increased practitioner participation as well as increased scientist-practitioner collaboration, we also discovered a trend towards increased collaboration in general. As the following chart (Figure 4) indicates, there has been a steady increase in the mean number of participants per SIOP presentation. This trend is fairly consistent across all four session types, but once again, the collaboration seems most evident in symposia and least evident with poster sessions.

Discussion

In general, practitioner participation in the annual Conference has increased from 1988 to 1999, as has the amount of collaboration between practitioner and academic. This provides some evidence that in the past 12 years, the scientist-practitioner gap between I-O psychologists has shrunk.

Interestingly, the greatest degree of joint participation occurred within symposia. This may be due to the fact that the format of symposia is more amenable to joint participation. According to the SIOP 15^th Annual Conference Call for Proposals (SIOP, 1999, p. 4), A symposium is a session in which participants present their views about a common issue or question. With such a format, different perspectives are likely to be sought out in the interest of a balanced discussion. Moreover, the SIOP submission guidelines encourage the presentation of diverse and novel perspectives in symposia (SIOP, 1999, p. 4). In contrast, poster sessions have the least amount of scientist-practitioner joint participation. This may be explained by the fact that poster sessions are more traditional in terms of their research-orientation (i.e., data are required and a complete paper is submitted according to APA style with introduction, method, results, discussion, and references).

There are a number of caveats associated with the current study. First, we were unable to identify/eliminate student participants. However, student participants would almost always have been classified as academics, due to the fact that the affiliation listed in the Conference program is typically the university where they were receiving their graduate training. Thus, while a number of graduate students may have considered themselves to have more of a practitioner orientation, they were included as academics, resulting in an overestimate of academic participation and a more conservative test of the hypotheses.

Second, the present study used academic affiliation as a proxy for a designation of pure scientist. Many academics engage in a substantial amount of consulting, with some even owning and operating their own consulting firms. Such individuals might more appropriately be classified as scientist-practitioners, rather than solely as scientists.

In terms of future research, scientist and practitioner participation rates in the SIOP Conference program, and in SIOP, in general, should continue to be monitored. In addition, the rate of collaborative work that occurs within the context of SIOP programs should continue to be examined, and expanded to include the extent to which collaborative works are published in I-O journals.

While presenting an earlier version of this paper at the SIOP Conference in New Orleans, a number of useful ideas for decreasing the science-practice gap were identified in discussions with individuals. These discussions serve as the basis for the following sections on Tips for Academics and Tips for Practitioners for reducing the science-practice gap.

Tips for Academics

1. Develop and maintain an internship program for undergraduate or graduate students. While monitoring student progress in such programs, academics will learn about current activities and projects that are being conducted in various applied settings. In addition, academics may become acquainted with the practitioners who are supervising the students. This is likely to make it easier to envision, and thereby engage in, joint science-practitioner projects. Some organizations are eager to use and develop student talent.

2. Serve as a consultant to organizations. Consultants generally become familiar with an organizations culture, gain an understanding of the problems it faces, and work with organizational members to develop action plans and large-scale interventions to solve or alleviate such problems. To this end, an academic consultant is often in a good position to examine, using experimental methods, the efficacy of such plans and interventions. The results of such field experiments could be presented jointly at Conferences and published in journals.

3. Replicate laboratory studies in the field. If every academic took one laboratory study every few years and attempted to expand upon it and replicate it in the field, academics would develop an even greater respect for and understanding of the constraints within which many practitioners work. Furthermore, the more useful body of research that resulted would benefit both groups.

4. Attend professional conferences. The SIOP Conference, for example, is an invaluable way of staying current with practitioners issues, topics, and concerns. In addition, many states have regional associations of I-O psychologists. Such regional gatherings of I-O psychologists offer academics the chance to meet and become familiar with the work of practitioners living in the same city or region.

5. If all else fails, marry an I-O practitioner. This helps to ensure that the science-practice collaboration continues throughout the year.

Tips for Practitioners

1. Foster and maintain relationships with academics and academic institutions. A logical first place to begin is your alma mater, but do not forget about contacts at the undergraduate institution as well. The SIOP Conference allows practitioners to mingle with scientists on at least a yearly basis, while technology (e.g., e-mail, faxes, Web pages, etc.) makes communication throughout the remainder of the year that much easier. Inviting academics to participate in more practitioner-focused conferences is also a means of fostering this type of relationship.

2. Focus on collaborative efforts that utilize strength areas for practitioners. Some of these might include the growing use of technology, workplace trends, demographic changes, and so forth. Also, package the collaboration in forums that make sense for practitioners. For example, practitioners may be less interested in developing a formal paper (poster), compared with participating in a roundtable or symposia.

3. Do not forget to sell the benefits of attending the SIOP Conference to your organization. This includes highlighting specific SIOP sessions, returning from conferences with useful materials/learning, and actively participating in the Conference (theres no substitute for actually having your name, and your companys name, in the program). Not to mention the fact that SIOP Conference fees are far less expensive than many others (e.g., ASTD, SHRM, etc.).

4. If all else fails, marry an I-O academic/scientist. This helps to ensure that the science-practice collaboration continues throughout the year. 

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