Betz Receives APA Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Applied Research

Nancy Betz, PhD, professor emerita in the Department of Psychology at Ohio State University has been selected as a recipient of the 2020 APA Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Applied Research.  This award is given to a psychologist whose research has led to important discoveries or developments in the field of applied psychology.  The award will be presented at the APA/APF Awards Ceremony at the 2020 APA Convention in Washington, DC in August 2020.  Jo-Ida Hansen, PhD, professor emerita in the counseling psychology area of the Department of Psychology will have the honor of delivering the introduction for Betz.

Betz is one of the most prolific and visible scholars in the world in the areas of career-self-efficacy theory, empirical applied research, and assessment.  She and her collaborators developed numerous domain-relevant self-efficacy measures (e.g., Occupational Self-Efficacy Scale; Mathematics Self-Efficacy Scale; Skills Confidence Inventory; Social Self-Efficacy Scale; Career Decision Self-Efficacy Scale; and the Expanded Skills Confidence Inventory).  The development of these scales was crucial to providing researchers the means for applying self-efficacy theory to their own work.  Betz’s work has had an impact on both national and international researchers who study the applications of self-efficacy theory to career development.

In 1976 Betz received her doctorate degree in psychology at the University of Minnesota.  Her dissertation, "The effects of immediate knowledge of results on computer-administered tests of verbal ability," was advised by Professor David Weiss (Book of PhDs #721).