Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine, PhD

Course requirements and use of transfer credit

The PhD degrees in psychology require a minimum of 90 semester hours beyond the bachelor’s degree, plus a one-year supervised internship for the clinical, counseling, and health psychology/behavioral medicine programs. The qualified and accepted student may enter a degree program holding either a bachelor’s or master’s degree. No more than 30 hours from a master’s degree can be applied toward deficiencies for the doctoral degree.

A student entering with a master’s degree or equivalent may, with consent of the program director and/or department chair, transfer a maximum of 12 appropriate semester hours beyond the master’s degree. Thus, a minimum of 48 hours in residence would remain to be completed.

Students should be aware that internship training sites are spread across the country. Responsibility for an internship training site’s compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act rests with the internship site. Internships are competitive and the student is responsible for securing an internship that meets with departmental approval.

Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine

This program is offered in collaboration with our sister department at the UNT Health Science Center. Professional study requires a minimum of 103 semester hours, including 20 hours of general psychology (social psychology, research design and statistics, learning and cognition, history and systems, and physiological psychology) and 42 hours of clinical core courses (psychological assessment, psychopathology, medical and behavioral disorders, professional ethics, cultural aspects of health, psychotherapy methods, behavior analysis, developmental health psychology, applied psychophysiological procedures, and psychoneuroimmunology). Students are continually involved in clinical and research experiences before culminating professional preparation with a one-year, full-time clinical internship.

Additional requirements

Dual degree options

All doctoral programs make provisions to allow the completion of a master’s degree in general psychology.

Behavioral medicine makes provision for this plus two other master’s programs. En route to completing the requirements for the PhD students may select behavioral analysis or public health.

These additional options require separate application to and admission by the Department of Behavior Analysis or the School of Biomedical Science respectively. The option with behavioral analysis provides a knowledge base in the principles, theory and research methods of behavioral analysis for applications in medicine and health contexts. The option with public health prepares students for roles in the development, implementation and evaluation of models involving the promotion of health behaviors, the prevention of physical and psychological trauma, and the creation of environmental contexts supportive of personal well-being.

Foreign language or research tool requirement

Candidates must present evidence that they have a reading knowledge of one foreign language (see the Doctoral Degree Requirements section of this catalog for details) or have demonstrated competency in a research tool subject that has been approved by the Department of Psychology and the graduate council. If the tool substitution involves taking additional courses, the student must make a minimum grade of B in each course. Credits earned are in addition to the hours required for the degree.

Residence requirement

The candidate must meet the doctoral residence requirement as outlined in the Doctoral degree requirements section of this catalog.

Qualifying PhD examination in the major area

Each of the departmental PhD programs requires successful completion of a comprehensive examination in the student’s respective program. The faculty in each program area is responsible for the format, administration and grading of the examination.

Dissertation examinations

Students complete two dissertation-related examinations: the proposal and the final comprehensive examination. Students first defend their dissertation proposal, which can be done only after successfully completing the language requirement, master’s thesis or its equivalent, and the qualifying PhD examination for the program. Upon completion of the dissertation research, the student may schedule the final comprehensive exam for the dissertation.

Advisory committee

A temporary degree program advisor is assigned to doctoral students during the first term/semester of enrollment. The dissertation committee is formed at some point later in the student’s program. Each dissertation committee in the Department of Psychology is to have, as its basic structure, the following:

Three persons employed as faculty members by the Department of Psychology or as regular members of a Department of Psychology program committee.
Each committee may, but is not required to, have additional members from outside the Department of Psychology. An additional member may be (a) a UNT faculty member from another department; (b) a community professional especially appointed to the committee through the Department of Psychology; or (c) a faculty member from another university especially appointed to the committee through the Department of Psychology. Additional members may not replace the three departmental members.
Programs may place other restrictions on dissertation committee composition, but cannot authorize deviation from the basic structure (e.g., the three departmental faculty) described above.