Operationalizing and Evaluating Professional Competencies in Psychology: Out With the Old, in With the New?

This commentary on the Competency Benchmarks and the Competency Assessment Toolkit articles focuses on 2 areas in which more work needs to be done to assure that a final process of competency evaluation is ultimately helpful to the field, to our clients, and to our constituents. First, improving competency assessment relative to previous historical attempts to do this is described as a priority, especially in the area of examining the psychometric adequacy of the decisions made based on competency assessments. Second, the article outlines the emerging regulatory context for the field that must be accounted for in any efforts to develop and implement competency assessments. Finally, concluding recommendations for next steps are given.