Graduate Program in Research Psychology
Comprehensive Examinations
The Graduate School requires that you pass, before graduation, a comprehensive examination covering your field of concentration. This requirement is usually completed during a student's second year of graduate study. Recent changes in how we conduct the comprehensive examination is given in the box below.
From Dr. Wuensch: Updated 08.17.07
Comprehensive Examinations Required for Psychology Graduate Students
Two actions related to the comprehensive examinations were taken at the departmental retreat on the 16th of January, 1999.
• First, the comprehensive examination committee was eliminated from the departmental code.
• Second, the core component of the comprehensive examination was abolished. In other words, the "specialty examination," is now the entire comprehensive examination, and its administration, grading, recording, reporting, etc. is handled by the program directors. The comprehensive examination administered by the program directors may or may not include material from the core courses (statistics, learning, and cognition), and may or may not involve a traditional written examination. In accordance with the motion passed at the retreat, I have revised the comprehensive examination policy statement by eliminating all material which referred to the core examinations. Here is the revised policy statement:
Establishing procedures for the administration of the comprehensive examination is the responsibility of the director of the appropriate program (General, Clinical, or School). The program director will decide upon the content of the exam and how it will be graded. Program directors may allow students to satisfy the comprehensive examination requirement by a nonexamination option, such as completing a research project and publishing it or presenting it at a professional meeting. In any case, once the student has completed the comprehensive examination, the program director will notify the Graduate School regarding whether the examination was passed or failed.
Students will not be permitted to defend their thesis until they have passed the comprehensive examination.
Information for students in the Research concentration of the General program is given below.
Students in the Research concentration should consult Dr. Karl Wuensch for information regarding and for scheduling their comprehensive examination. Listed below are options available for satisfying the comprehensive examination requirement.
• Option 1, Traditional Written Examination: The examination will be administered twice a year, on the afternoon of the first Tuesday in March and the first Tuesday in October. Registration for the examination must be completed not later than one month prior to the scheduled date of the examination. The registration form (a Word document) can be downloaded here: Register for Research Comps. The student agrees to take a three hour written examination based on the content of three of the graduate level courses taught in our department. For each of those three courses, the faculty member who taught the course is asked to submit to Dr. Wuensch an examination which should be able to be completed in 50 minutes. That faculty member is also asked to agree to be the first reader to grade the examination and to supply the names of two other faculty members who would be qualified to serve as second and third readers should that be necessary. Once all the materials required to administer the examination have been collected, Dr. Wuensch will schedule the examination and arrange for proctoring etc. On each of the three exams, if the student receives either an A or a B from the first reader, then that is the student's final grade on that examination. If the student receives either a C or an F from the first reader, the examination automatically goes on to a second reader. If the second reader returns the same letter grade (any pluses or minuses will be ignored), that is the student's final grade. If the first and second readers differ, then the examination goes to a third reader, in which case the final grade is the simple median of the three grades given. Each reader is strongly encouraged to complete grading the exams within one calendar week. If a reader has not graded and returned the exams within ten calendar days, then Dr. Wuensch will record for that exam a grade of "B" from that reader. Students who receive on the three exams:
- No final grade lower than a B, pass unconditionally.
- One C and no F, must retake the examination on which the C was received.
- Two final grades lower than a B, must retake all three examinations.
- One final grade of F, must retake the entire examination.
- All A's, pass with honors.
• Option 2, Authorship of Published/Presented Scholarly Paper: The student may elect to satisfy the comprehensive examination requirement by presenting a research paper at a scholarly convention or publishing a research paper in a scholarly journal. The research presented or published must be in research psychology and must have been completed while the student was in our graduate program. If a presentation at a scholarly convention, the convention must be one where submissions are reviewed prior to being placed on the program. If a student elects to present at a regional, national, or international convention which does not have such a review procedure, the student may petition the program director, asking that the presentation be evaluated locally (by faculty here at ECU) to determine whether or not it is of sufficient quality to satisfy the comprehensive examination requirement. One possible mechanism for such an evaluation would be for the student to present the paper at a colloquium here at ECU, with the evaluating faculty (and others) in the audience. If the student satisfies the comprehensive examination requirement by publishing a research paper in a scholarly journal, the journal must be a journal with peer review.
• Option 3, Something Else: Students may request that the program director approve other means of satisfying the comprehensive examination requirement. For example, a student might propose satisfying the requirement by completing a semester of study at a university abroad and then giving a local (at ECU) presentation (colloquium) based on that experience.
When a student satisfies the comprehensive examination requirement, the Graduate School will be notified. If a student does not unconditionally pass the comprehensive examination on a first attempt, the Graduate School will be notified that the student has failed the examination once. If the student fails the examination a second time, the Graduate School will be notified and the student's degree program will be terminated.
