The Growth of Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Quick Facts
Steven G. Rogelberg
University of North Carolina Charlotte
Paula M. Gill
Bowling Green State University
At the University of North CarolinaCharlotte, we are in the process of establishing an interdisciplinary doctoral program in Organizational Science. As part of our efforts, each of the core disciplines comprising the proposed program (I-O, OB/HRM, Organizational Sociology, and Organizational Communications) provided data demonstrating the growth of their field. Part of the I-O data we collected stemmed directly from the SIOP archives. We thought that these data may be of interest to SIOP members.
The Data
With the help of the SIOP Administrative Office, we collected trend data on I-O and organizational psychology graduate programs, SIOP conference attendance, and SIOP membership.
Graduate Programs
To identify the number of I-O graduate programs across time, we used two sources. The earliest complete listing of graduate programs was found in the
Graduate Training Programs in Industrial-Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior published by SIOP (1986). To examine the current set of graduate training programs, the SIOP Web page (January 15, 2004) was used
(http://siop.org/GTP/GtpLookup.asp). In both sources, we only quantified those graduate programs that were either explicitly I-O psychology or explicitly organizational psychology.
By examining the data, it is evident that there is a substantial growth in the number of I-O and organizational psychology graduate programs. Over the 18-year span, there was found to be a 47.7% increase in doctoral programs overall and a 221.7% increase in MA/MS programs overall.
Table 1
____________________________________________________
Number of programs
____________________________________________________
Program type
1986
2004
____________________________________________________
| MA/MS I-O Psych |
22 |
66 |
| MA/MS Org. Psych |
1 |
8 |
| MA/MS Overall |
23 |
74 |
|
|
|
| PhD I-O Psych |
40 |
52 |
| PhD Org. Psych |
4 |
13 |
| PhD Overall |
44 |
65 |
____________________________________________________
Conference Attendance
In April 1986, SIOP held its first conference independent of the APA annual convention in Chicago, IL. It was estimated that 776 attendees attended the conference. In 2004, the annual convention was held again in Chicago. A total of 3,685 individuals registered for the conference. This record attendance represents a nearly 400% increase in attendees in less than 20 years.
Membership
We were able to obtain detailed membership data from as early as December 1991. We compared these data to the membership data reported on December 2003.
Table 2
____________________________________________________
Area of membership:
December December Percent of
1991 2003
increase:
____________________________________________________
| Member |
1,968 |
2,532 |
28.7% |
| Associate |
176 |
339 |
92.6% |
| International Affiliate |
84 |
200 |
138.1% |
| Students |
888 |
1,990 |
124.1% |
| Student International Affiliate |
3 |
139 |
4533.3% |
|
|
|
|
| Total |
3,314 |
5,519 |
66.5% |
____________________________________________________
These data are depicted graphically below.
Figure 1.
Summary
Despite the fact that the indices we used to assess the growth of I-O have limitations and are somewhat narrow in scope, they each yield a similar set of resultsI-O psychology as a discipline is growing at a considerable pace. The next challenge is to systematically identify the factors (e.g., public awareness of I-O; high school and undergraduate student curriculums that promote student demand; university administrators perceptions of the importance of I-O; increased funding opportunities; organizational needs) behind the growth and to examine how these factors can be sustained and further nurtured.
July 2004 Table
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