Language: ASPPB offers a French form of the EPPP (the FEPPP) where a licensing authority legally requires one. ASPPB has not yet published the competency statements in French, so our questions and cards are in English until it does.

6.A.2

Standards, guidelines and what each asks of you

ASPPB's competency statement 6.A.2: Professional standards and relevant guidelines for the practice of psychology (e.g., Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, telepsychology guidelines)

Ethics codes are not the only documents that shape practice. The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (AERA, APA and NCME, 2014) set expectations for developing, using and interpreting tests, and APA professional practice guidelines, such as the 2024 Guidelines for the Practice of Telepsychology, recommend how to work in particular areas. A psychologist needs to know what each document covers and how much force it carries, because the enforceable Code still applies underneath every guideline.

Key ideas

Standards versus guidelines: In APA's usage, standards are mandatory and may carry an enforcement mechanism. Professional practice guidelines are aspirational: they recommend conduct, are not intended to be mandatory or exhaustive, and may not apply to every situation.
Clinical practice guidelines: Distinct from professional practice guidelines, which address a psychologist's conduct in an area of practice, clinical practice guidelines (treatment guidelines) recommend specific interventions for specific disorders or conditions.
Validity for a use: The Testing Standards treat validity as the most fundamental consideration and define it for proposed interpretations and uses of scores, not for a test in itself. A new use, population or decision needs its own supporting evidence.
Accommodations and modifications: The Testing Standards distinguish accommodations, which change how a test is given without changing the construct measured, from modifications, which change the construct, so the resulting scores may not be comparable with the norms.
Telepsychology guidelines (2024): Eleven guidelines: competence; informed consent; data security, management and transmission; data disposal; documentation; interjurisdictional practice; clinical best practices; testing and assessment; emergencies; supervision and training; and emerging technologies. They replaced the eight guidelines of 2013.

Worked example

A manufacturing company asks a psychologist to screen job applicants for "emotional stability" with a personality inventory whose manual reports validity evidence only for clinical diagnosis in outpatient samples. The company wants a pass or fail cut score for each applicant.

Name the governing document: the Testing Standards, whose chapters on validity, cut scores and workplace testing apply to selection decisions.
Ask what interpretation is proposed. Evidence for clinical diagnosis does not show that scores predict job performance, so the selection use lacks support.
Check the Code underneath: APA Standard 9.02 requires using assessments in a manner and for purposes that research on their usefulness and proper application supports.
Offer a sound path: measures with job-related validity evidence, or a local validation study, with any cut score set and documented by an accepted method.

Ask not whether a test is valid but whether this interpretation is supported for this use.

Check yourself

A colleague says that departing from a recommendation in APA's telepsychology guidelines is, by itself, an ethics violation. Which statement is most accurate?

Practise 6.A.2

Sources

American Psychological Association (2015), Professional practice guidelines: Guidance for developers and users, American Psychologist 70(9), 823-831 (PMID 26653311), Definitions: guidelines compared with standards; professional practice guidelines compared with clinical practice guidelines
AERA, APA and NCME (2014), Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, Chapter 1 (Validity); Chapter 3 (Fairness in Testing: accommodations and modifications); Chapter 5 (cut scores); Chapter 11 (Workplace Testing and Credentialing)
American Psychological Association (2024), Guidelines for the Practice of Telepsychology, as summarized in Perle and colleagues (2026), A compendium for the 2024 APA Guidelines for the Practice of Telepsychology, American Psychologist 81(2), 270-282 (PMID 40875352), Abstract: the 11 guideline topics, revised from the eight guidelines of 2013
American Psychological Association (2017), Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, Standard 9.02, Use of Assessments