Discipline of psychologists held in violation for sexual misconduct

State licensing boards have had no guidelines from the profession to inform their decision-making regarding sanctions for psychologists held in violation for sexual misconduct. The absence of guidelines has resulted in a patch work of case-by-case decision-making in which offenders are sanctioned inconsistently. The authors assumed that the absence of guidelines was based upon disagreement within the profession about how offenders should be sanctioned. We conducted a national survey of practicing psychologists that found a consensus regarding how severely state licensing boards should sanction offenders.