Related FAQS
Supervision of Research and Other Non-Clinical Services (Standard 4.1) – I employ a research assistant who helps conduct psychological research. The assistant does not provide any clinical services. Do the Standards of Professional Conduct regarding supervision apply?
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The Supervision standards apply to the supervision of all psychological services and psychological research is deemed to be a psychological service. In the public interest, it is important to ensure that research is conducted ethically and that it produces reliable and valid information.

Some activities which non-members perform in the course of assisting with research may not require supervision if one would not need professional education, training, and/or experience in order to perform them. For example, tasks like administratively providing and collecting self-administered questionnaires may be performed without the supervision of the nature required by the Standards. Tasks which do require professional education, training, and/or experience, like interactive administration of tests and/or interpretation of subjects’ responses, would require supervision in the manner set out in the Standards.

Use of the Client Names in Supervision Records (Standards 4.1.1 [3]) – The Standards require information that will permit identification of each client discussed at each supervision meeting. What about client confidentiality?
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Although the Standards require you to record information that will permit the identification of each client, there is no need to use full client names, as long as it is possible for you to associate these identifiers with the clients should you need to. The use of coded names would prevent the release of unnecessary personal health information about clients to those reviewing a file for purposes related only to the supervisee.

Examples of appropriate references to clients in a supervision file include: “Discussed Interpretation of Test Scores for A.L. and asked Supervisee to correct tabulations and reinterpret with new scores” or “Discussed Supervisee’s own reaction to N.Q.’s disclosure, Supervisee discussed own discomfort with this issue and we generated a list of other possible responses, including seeking more information or waiting for the client to reflect before problem-solving. Will discuss Supervisee’s reactions to client information again following N.Q’s next session.”

Fees and Billing Arrangements (Standard 11.1) – With the removal of the prohibition against fee splitting removed from the Standards, may I now charge a supervisee a percentage of fees collected by the supervisee, a fixed dollar amount for each client or a fixed, flat fee charged on a weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or quarterly basis?
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As a supervisor, you are providing a psychological service and it is important that your own fee structure for this service complies with the requirement that your fees are based on the amount of time you spend providing the service and the complexity of the service you are providing. Charging a percentage of fees collected or the number of sessions a supervisee has with a client may not correspond to the amount of time you are providing supervision. Charging a flat fee for a time period, without regard to the specific number of hours spent within that time period, would also be inconsistent with the standard and would have the potential to also violate the prohibition against exploitation of supervisees (section 13.4(2), as a supervisee could possibly be charged for supervision which was out of proportion to the time spent.