Greetings and happy spring. Thank you for your membership and involvement in Div. 3 (Society for Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science).
I’m writing to all of you in hopes of sparking your efforts to recruit and maintain a strong membership pool in Div. 3. In continuing the tradition of sharing data with you (because who doesn’t love some compelling data?), allow me to share some trends within our division that I find noteworthy. First, we experienced a relatively stable growth pattern of 15-25 percent from year to year between 2013-2016, but then dropped by 25 percent in 2017. Let’s make sure that this is just noise in the data and that the trend is still moving upward.
How can you do this? Reach out to fellow APA members. Reach out to colleagues. Reach out to students. Reach out to someone new at the APA Convention. In my short time as membership chair, I’ve had numerous conversations with folks who would fit in perfectly and thrive from involvement with our division, but simply weren’t aware of it. So help us to spread the word.
There are some patterns that have held constant over the last five years. Based on the average from 2012-2016, Div. 3 is:
- 75 percent male (SD = .46).
- 87 percent white (self-identified) (SD = 1.99).
- 77 percent over the age of 60 (SD = 1.52).
These patterns are remarkably consistent but fail to capture the wider diversity of those in our field. As an early career woman in the field, I am passionate about sharing opportunities with other female scientists and hope that you will join me in encouraging a rich and representative membership base as we move forward.
If you are interested in a more detailed breakdown of division membership, please feel free to have a look at the division profiles.