| Course | PS 130 Career Paths in Psychology |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 5 |
| Paper type | Informational interview write-up |
| Length | About 1,050 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Herzing University |
| Program | BS in Psychology |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for PS 130 Unit 5
Thirty-Five Minutes With a Clinic Supervisor: A Composite Informational Interview Write-Up Showing How the Report and the Reflection Are Kept Apart
Student Name
Psychology, Herzing University
PS 130: Career Paths in Psychology
Instructor Name
September 9, 2026
Thirty-Five Minutes With a Clinic Supervisor: A Composite Informational Interview Write-Up Showing How the Report and the Reflection Are Kept Apart
A Note on This Example
The informational interview in this course is fieldwork that every student conducts personally, with a real professional who has agreed to speak with them, under the classroom's rules. Nobody can conduct it for you, and this page does not draft one. What follows is a composite, built for illustration from the kind of conversation students report, so that the arrangement and tone of a finished write-up are visible. No real person is described.
The Interview
The person interviewed is a clinical supervisor at an applied behavior analysis clinic serving children in a mid-sized Wisconsin city, a Board Certified Behavior Analyst who began her career as a behavior technician. The conversation took place by video call on September 3, 2026, lasted thirty-five minutes and was arranged through the clinic's general inbox. At the start I explained that I was a psychology student, that the conversation was for a course assignment and that my write-up would not name her or the clinic. She agreed. I did not record the call; I took notes and, with her agreement, read back the two statements I wanted to quote exactly.
Prepared Questions
I wrote these questions two days before the call and sent the first three to her in advance.
1. What does a behavior technician at your clinic do on an ordinary day?
2. What do you look for when hiring someone who is not yet certified?
3. What surprises new technicians most in their first three months?
4. How does supervision work in practice, and how often do you see each technician?
5. What part of the job do technicians find hardest?
6. Where do technicians at your clinic usually go after two or three years?
7. Is there anything in the board's requirements that people misunderstand?
8. What would you do differently if you were starting out now?
What She Said
A typical day, she said, holds three sessions, each roughly two and a half hours long, with different children, split between the clinic and families' homes. Most of a technician's attention, she said, goes to running programs consistently and recording data accurately. In her words, "The data are the job. If the data are wrong, I make the wrong decisions."
On hiring, she said the clinic hires uncertified people and provides the 40-hour training itself, so she looks less for coursework than for reliability, patience and comfort being on the floor with a young child. She mentioned that the clinic began using a new training program in January to meet the board's 2026 requirements, which matches the change the board's guidance describes (Behavior Analyst Certification Board [BACB], 2025).
New technicians, she said, are most surprised by how much feedback they receive. She or another supervisor watches part of each technician's sessions every week, more often than the board's minimum, because, as she put it, "you can't fix what you don't see." She said the hardest part for many technicians is not the children's behavior but the parents: being in a family's home, keeping professional boundaries and redirecting questions about treatment to the supervisor.
Asked where technicians go, she said roughly half of her clinic's technicians stay two years or less. Some leave for unrelated work; a smaller number start graduate programs in behavior analysis, school psychology or special education. She described the most common misunderstanding of the requirements as the belief that a technician can make treatment decisions once certified, which she said is never the case.
Her advice for someone starting now was to take a technician job only if they were curious about how behavior changes, not just looking for a job related to psychology, and to keep careful notes on what they learn from supervision.
Reflection
This is where my own reading begins, and it is separate from what she said.
Several of her statements matched what earlier units found in the documents. Her point that technicians never make treatment decisions agrees with the ethics code's requirement that technicians direct questions about services to their supervisor and follow the supervisor's direction (BACB, 2021). Her emphasis on data matches the code's requirement to complete documentation accurately. Her weekly observation goes beyond the 5 percent minimum in the board's guidance (BACB, 2025), which suggests that the minimum describes a floor, not a typical practice, at least at this clinic.
Two things she said changed my view. I had assumed coursework would be the main hiring criterion, as the postings in Unit 2 implied; she put reliability and comfort with children first. And her estimate of turnover, which is one person's impression rather than data, raises a question the employment figures in Unit 4 could not answer: whether this role is a career or a stage. The federal data project many openings in the nearest related occupation, much of it from workers leaving (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026), and her account suggests that, at least in her clinic, leaving is common. Her description of parents as the hardest part also points to the boundary standards in the ethics code, which I return to in Unit 7.
What I Would Ask Next Time
Three questions I did not prepare would have helped. I did not ask what technicians at her clinic are paid, which would have given me one local figure to set against the national medians, though she might reasonably have declined to answer. I did not ask how the clinic handles a technician who disagrees with a plan, which would have tested how the ethics code's direction to raise concerns with the supervisor works in practice. And I did not ask what she would look for in a technician who wanted to train toward board certification as a behavior analyst, which is the path I am weighing. A follow-up email with those three questions, sent with a thank-you, is the next step.
Limits
One conversation describes one clinic through one person's experience. Her turnover estimate is an impression, and her clinic may differ from others in size, funding and supervision practice. The value of the interview is not that it is representative but that it tests the documents against someone who works under them every day.
References
Behavior Analyst Certification Board. (2021). RBT ethics code (2.0). https://www.bacb.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/RBT-Ethics-Code-240830-a.pdf
Behavior Analyst Certification Board. (2025). Guidance for meeting RBT requirements during the 2026 transition. https://www.bacb.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/RBT-2026-Requirements_250723-a.pdf
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2026). Psychiatric technicians and aides. In Occupational outlook handbook. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/psychiatric-technicians-and-aides.htm
PS 130 Unit 5 instructions, in plain terms
The fifth PS 130 unit asks students to conduct an informational interview with a working professional and write it up. The interview is your own fieldwork and cannot be conducted for you. The write-up typically opens with who was interviewed, given as a role in a type of workplace rather than by name, when the conversation happened, how long it ran and that it took place with the person's agreement. Prepared questions appear as written beforehand. The account reports what the professional said in paraphrase, with exact quotations marked. A separate reflection ties the conversation back to course research. Recording a conversation requires the person's explicit permission and is often unnecessary.
How the PS 130 Unit 5 example is put together
A note at the top states that the example is a composite. The interview section gives the supervisor's role, the clinic type and city size, the date, length, format and the agreement obtained, including how two quotations were confirmed. Eight prepared questions follow as written. The account reports the supervisor's answers in paraphrase, grouped by topic, with exact words marked. The reflection, clearly separated, compares her statements with the ethics code and transition guidance, notes two points that changed the writer's view and links turnover to the federal outlook data. A section lists three questions for a follow-up, and the close states the limits of one conversation.
Where the points sit in the PS 130 Unit 5 rubric
Herzing's rubric for the informational interview write-up usually allots points to a clear account of the interview's circumstances, evidence of preparation, an accurate and attributed report, a reflection separated from the report and tied to course material, and professional handling of the person's identity. Circumstances earn credit when date, length and agreement are stated. Preparation scores when questions appear as written in advance. The report is judged on paraphrase that is fair to the speaker and quotations that are marked. Reflection is often the largest criterion, rewarding links to earlier research. Identity is handled well when the person cannot be recognized. Follow-up questions for a second conversation are often credited as evidence of reflection.
PS 130 Unit 5 help before you submit
Interview write-ups lose points when the report and the writer's opinions are mixed together. Another frequent weakness is missing the prepared questions, which the assignment uses to judge preparation. Students often quote at length without confirming the words or present paraphrase as quotation. Some identify the person by name, employer or details that make them recognizable. Others reflect in general terms without connecting to earlier units. Recording without permission is never acceptable. The conversation itself must be yours. What our writers can help with is structuring your notes into a clear report and reflection. Treating one person's impressions as facts about a whole field is another common weakness.
Get a PS 130 Unit 5 example written to your instructions
What we can do here is limited on purpose: send the Unit 5 instructions and your PS 130 rubric, and a composite example comes back showing how the logistics, the questions, the reported answers and the reflection are arranged. The conversation, the permission and the notes stay yours. First sample free, 24 to 48 hours.
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PS 130 Unit 5 questions, answered
Can this part be outsourced at all?
The writing around it can be shaped; the interview cannot. A conversation has to have happened with a real person who agreed to it, and a write-up produced without one is invented evidence submitted for points. What a composite example gives you is the arrangement and the register, so you can see where your own material goes once you have gathered it.
How much of the person's identity goes in?
As little as carries the write-up. A role, a kind of workplace and the years they have been doing it will usually do everything the document needs, while a name, an employer or a distinctive detail turns a favor into a publication. Your instructions may set this explicitly, and where they do not, ask the person what they are comfortable seeing written down.
Am I allowed to record the conversation?
That is settled by your classroom and by the person you are talking to, not by us. Recording rules differ by state as well, and some sections ask for notes only. Ask permission before anything starts, say what the recording is for, and if the answer is no, take notes instead, which is what most finished write-ups are built from anyway.
Where can I find a free PS 130 Unit 5 sample paper?
The PS 130 Unit 5 informational interview example, built as a composite, can be read here in full without charge, with the prepared questions, the report, the reflection and margin notes. The interview itself must be your own; for help organizing your notes, tell us the assignment and we explain the structure at no charge.
How much of the person's identity goes into a PS 130 Unit 5 write-up?
Only their role and type of workplace. The sample describes a clinical supervisor at a children's clinic in a mid-sized city and gives no name, employer or identifying detail.