Science of mind and behaviour or allied health profession? Changes in the organisational location of psychology in Australian universities

ABSTRACT

Objective

The study aimed to characterise the past and current organisational location of psychology in Australian universities.

Method

Contemporary and archived websites of 38 universities were examined to determine whether, in 2005 and 2022, psychology was located within a health-focused organisational structure and functioned as a stand-alone administrative entity.

Results

Most psychology units are currently stand-alone and located within a health-focused structure. Since 2005 they have gravitated into health-focused structures (36.8% to 68.4%) and become less autonomous (84.2% to 63.2%). These trends diverge from the typical arrangement in top North American and UK psychology units.

Conclusions

Australian psychology academics increasingly work in health-focused structures where their discipline is not administratively autonomous. This trend brings opportunities and risks.

Key Points

What is already known about this topic:

1. Australian academic psychology units sit in varied organisational structures.

2. Most early units were located in Arts or Science rather than health faculties.

3.  The clinical and health-related domains of psychology have expanded rapidly.

What this topic adds:

1. Most psychology units now sit in health-focused organisational structures.

2. Units have become more health-focused and less autonomous since 2005.

3. These trends are contrary to the norm in leading UK and North American universities.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychology
• organisations
• health
• universities
• inter-disciplinarity
• Australia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

All data for the study are presented in Table 1 and are also available on request.