The Division 5 Business Meeting at the APA Convention will be held Friday, August 3 at 4:00-4:50 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Level 1, Room 154B. Several new Division initiatives will be announced and open discussion will be held: A Salon Program, the possibility of a new journal, and the 2024 convention program theme. All members are encouraged to attend this meeting to hear the news, raise questions, offer input, and engage in discussion of the three initiatives. The Business Meeting will be followed by a social at a location to be determined where participants in the continuing Division 5 Mentoring Program and all division members are welcome to share refreshments, to network, and to continue to discuss new our initiatives.
First, a Division 5 Virtual Salon Program has been proposed by President Debbi Bandalos to begin in 2023. These salons will be held virtually for Division 5 members over the next year and may include skill-focused workshops, keynote speakers, panel discussions, and topics for debate and perspective exchange among division leaders and members. At the convention Business Meeting, we will brainstorm topics, speakers, and the desired frequency of our salons. All members are welcome to attend, participate, and share their ideas, including the interests and goals that our virtual salons will serve.
Second, the Executive Committee is considering the launch of a new divisional journal for the purpose of furthering our division's leadership in APA and psychology as well as creating a revenue stream that will enable the Division to enhance benefits to members. One possible title under consideration is Perspectives on Methodology and Assessment in Psychological Inquiry and Practice. The purpose of the new publication would be to provide a platform for discussing the conceptual foundations of inquiry into psychological and behavioral phenomena, including the assumptions, rationale, goals, kinds of evidence, norms, limits, and systems of methods. Consistent with the mission of Division 5, the journal would be inclusive of a wide range of methods, including those in all areas of inquiry--quantitative and qualitative research, measurement, assessment, and evaluation in psychology. This journal would be broadly inclusive and equitable regarding diverse cultural, theoretical, practical, and philosophical positions and perspectives on exploration, discovery, and validity to improve the acquisition of knowledge about psychological phenomena. At the APA Convention, members will have an opportunity to discuss the focus, aims, goals, possible titles, format, editorial structure, and potential publishers of a new Division 5 publication.
Third, a tentative theme for the 2024 Division 5 Convention Program is Nurturing Roots, Branching Innovation: Cultivating Synthesis and Growth in Psychological Methods. This theme follows Alex Beaujean's presidential address last year on the importance of methodology and the philosophy of science and the emphasis of Debbi Bandalos in this year’s program on the importance of conducting more critical, nuanced, and racially just research. Tentative ideas for programming to highlight at next year's convention include our field’s epistemological roots, innovative new procedures, syntheses of existing methods, and the application of critical frameworks to study psychological phenomena across our subareas of Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics (EMS); Assessment; and Qualitative inquiry. This program will align with APA's strategic plan and goals to build psychology's foundation on science, to champion diversity and inclusion, to impact social justice issues, and to prepare psychology for the future. Members are invited to help shape and refine the theme and suggest ideas including important recent articles, highly cited reviews, past symposia and presentations, and members' interests and projects that relate to the above program theme. Those attending the business meeting and social thereafter will be able to network in order to develop submissions for symposia, skill building sessions, critical conversations, and data blitzes.
These three initiatives--the virtual salons, a new Division journal, and next year's convention program--aim to renew our division as the locus of forward-edge, critical, generative thinking about the scientific foundations of psychology and the methods we use to understand psychological phenomena. These three interrelated pathways of renewal will offer opportunities for leadership and learning where all our division members, from preeminent researchers/scholars to new students of all our field's diverse orientations, can interact, develop mutual understanding, collaborate, and forge an ever-brighter future for psychology. After the August Convention, we will share a report in the Score that summarizes the discussions at the business meeting, social, and executive meeting in order to communicate to the larger Division membership emerging details about the Division 5 Salon Program, a possible new journal, and the 2024 division convention program. All members are encouraged to share their ideas about these new initiatives and our emerging vision for Division 5 with the presidential trio.