NCBTMB Releases Needs Assessment Survey Report

The NCBTMB has just released their Needs Assessment Survey Report, a 15-page document that can be accessed here. The main purpose of this survey was to determine how massage therapists feel about the NCB’s plan to offer an advanced certification exam. In total, 6, 883 massage therapists responded to the survey, with 80% of those answering at least four questions. It would seem to me that which four questions were answered is of relevance, and assuming that it wasn’t the same four for everyone, that could significantly skew the results.

I clarified with Elizabeth Langston, the NCB’s Director of Exam Development, that AMTA and ABMP had helped spread the word about this survey (as did I; I posted it all over the Internet), with the result that 25% of the respondents are not now, nor have they ever been, certificants of the NCB.

Strangely, 19% of the respondents claim to have both the NCTM and the NCTMB certifications. Since TM is included in the TMB certification, it’s beyond me why anyone would pay the expense of having both. I fear that’s just an indication of how little new certificants (less than one 4-year period) actually know about certification. It’s been my experience that a lot of people just pay the money and take the test and really don’t know any details about what it means. Certainly there are thousands out there who don’t know the difference in certification and licensure, and I see the concrete evidence of that every single day.

70% of the respondents considered themselves to be advanced practitioners, and yet 45% of the participants have been in the profession less than two years. Apparently it doesn’t take some people that long to start considering themselves to be advanced. And yet, nearly 12% of those who have been in practice 6-10 years, don’t classify themselves as advanced. There’s something a little wrong with that picture. READ MORE....