Training and Education in Professional Psychology, Vol 19(2), May 2025, 106-115; doi:10.1037/tep0000506
Clinical supervision is an essential component of health service psychology training, yet there are very few measures assessing competence in the practice of supervision. Little is known about the impact of supervision competence on trainees’ development. Data were collected from the psychology training programs of an urban academic medical center in the Midwest United States from 2015 to 2020. At the end of each training year, trainees completed the following: (a) the Psychology Trainee Evaluation of Supervision Competencies, a trainee-report measure of supervision competence with seven domains matching those of the American Psychological Association’s (2014) guidelines for supervision, and (b) the Profession-Wide Competencies Growth Survey, a brief measure asking trainees to what degree the supervisor facilitated their acquisition of each profession-wide competency of health service psychology (i.e., research, ethics, diversity, professionalism, communication, assessment, intervention, supervision, and consultation/interdisciplinary collaboration). Using 203 completed Psychology Trainee Evaluation of Supervision Competencies responses from 110 trainees, exploratory graph analysis was applied to examine the measure’s dimensional structure, revealing a single dimension of supervision competence. Cross-classified multilevel models demonstrated that supervision competence predicted greater trainee self-reported growth across all nine profession-wide competencies. Trainees’ race/ethnicity impacted their report of growth in diversity competence. The findings demonstrate the following: (a) the utility of the Psychology Trainee Evaluation of Supervision Competencies for assessing supervision competence from the trainee perspective, (b) empirical support for American Psychological Association’s (2014) seven domains of supervision competence, and (c) that competent supervision enhances trainees’ competencies, readying them for professional practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)