The Scientist-practitioner Consulting Psychologist

This article identifies issues relevant to the scientist-practitioner model espoused by consulting psychology. It asks what it means to be a scientist-practitioner in more than aspirational or superficial terms and notes the frequent gap between science and practice and between practice and science. These gaps, it is argued, call for changed behavior on the part of both practitioners and of researchers. It is argued that the scientificpractitioner model can be differentiating in a highly competitive area of practice, that science can make its research more relevant to practice, and that practitioners have an important role to play in assuring the linkage of practice with research and theory. A recent publication (Nowack, K. M., & Mashihi, S., 2012) is used to illustrate a positive example of the scientist-practitioner model in which practice recommendations derive from scientific findings.