What can you do? 

 1. Email or call the board of psychology for your state, province, or territory. Tell them that you do not want the EPPP-2 to be made a requirement. Use the email or phone templates below or write your own letter. If you don't see your board's contact information listed below, check this list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Wsi9AdQcSbEdJ97oiz-hLDm_poCTO6j9_shPCcmMtp8/edit#gid=0  

2. Tell your friends, colleagues, and professional network. Many psychologists and trainees are not aware that this change is taking place or might not know the harm that it could cause our field.  

3. Learn more about the concerns: 

 ● EPPP-2 will create new barriers to practice at the same time that escalating rates of mental health concerns nationwide have intensified pre-existing provider shortages. Adding EPPP-2 is likely to slow down the progress of licensure for candidates when additional psychologists are urgently needed. 

 ● EPPP-2 will further restrict diversity in the field. Several studies show alarming racial disparities in EPPP-1 pass rates. Existing research on the EPPP- 1 suggests that Black and Latinx psychology candidates fail the exam at two to four times the rate as white candidates, creating unnecessary constriction of the workforce pipeline for psychologists of color. This restriction may also increase jurisdictions’ risk of claims of violations of federal civil rights laws. 

 ● EPPP-2 will not contribute meaningfully to enhancing protection of the public. There is no evidence that EPPP-2 is an improvement over, or even as good as, existing evaluation methods in protecting the public. Supervisor competency ratings of psychology trainees, based on repeated assessment over thousands of hours of clinical experience, have been shown to be associated with key client outcomes, including attrition and change in the severity of symptoms over the course of treatment. There is no evidence that a multiple-choice test would outperform those supervisory observations. In contrast, evidence suggests that EPPP-2 scores will be more strongly related to other factors, such as test-taking ability and general cognitive factors, than to competence in service delivery. 

 ● EPPP-2 creates new financial burdens for trainees. The EPPP-2 is expected to nearly double the cost for licensure testing to approximately $1200 per candidate, plus additional costs of test preparation materials, study time, and lost income during the extended timeline to licensure. On top of substantial educational debt ($120,000 median), and the likelihood of disproportionate impact on first-generation and low-income candidates who are already underrepresented in the psychology workforce, increasing the financial burden on psychology licensure candidates for an exam without compelling data that it will improve the quality or safety of the psychology workforce is unacceptable. 

 ● Prior attempts to address these concerns with ASPPB have not yielded substantive change. The concerns detailed above have been raised in multiple forms, by various groups of stakeholders, over a period of several years. ASPPB responded by inviting a small group of stakeholders and ASPPB representatives to form an advisory group. After over a year of work, the Director of Examination Services released a presentation dismissing and mischaracterizing the group as supporting the validity of the current exam, severely rupturing trust in the advisory process. The Board of ASPPB chose to make Part 2 mandatory in any jurisdiction using Part 1 without taking a vote of the membership. These events do not suggest that ASPPB is willing to address stakeholder concerns or make alterations to their planned exam rollout. 

 If you want to read the articles supporting the points above, you can check them out here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1miBK7KozqP1WzfSoSGvcAY3W_I3rIr2iHOAU9uxD5I8/edit