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Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals:
Advancing professionalism through practice support, ethical standards, legislative advocacy, and public education. |
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  massagetherapy.com massageandbodywork.com massagemarketplace.com bodysensemagazine.com ascpskincare.com  Majority of California Schools Support Two-Tiered System "Drawing the line to roughly match our school's program hours is preferable ... but most of us would support the current two-tier proposal." A month ago ABMP sent a questionnaire to all 238 California massage schools to learn their perspectives on a couple key dimensions of a prospective state licensing bill. Responses were timely received from 50 schools of which 49 provided program length data necessary for categorization. Of those 50, 47 have at least one program approved by the Bureau of Private Post-Secondary Vocational Education (BPPVE). Of the other three, one has their program registered with BPPVE, and the programs offered by the other two are accredited by an agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. A description of key features of a massage licensing bill, including a two-tier (250/500 hours) approach to required education hours, was provided. Schools were then asked: "Recognizing that the bill will evolve, on balance would your school support enactment of a bill close in contents to the version now drafted?" Three schools did not answer this particular question. Of those who did, 62% said "Yes," 10% said "No," 22% suggested that they might support a bill, but only if changes were made to the current draft, and the remaining 6% did not answer the question. There appears to be no consistent answer to the nature of changes desired by those 22% of schools who wanted changes (other than them consistently feeling strongly about this matter since the questionnaire offered only "yes" or "no" as answer choices, meaning that these 11 respondents overrode that guidance). Schools answering this way were spread fairly evenly among those with short, intermediate, and long hour primary program offerings. The most reasonable inference is that schools answering the question this way aren't enamored with the two-tier approach; those with short programs desire a single standard in the 200-300 hour range, those with intermediate length programs want a single standard around 300-350 hours, and those with long programs mostly want a single standard requiring 600-700 hours. To understand how the full group of school owners/directors feel in their heart of hearts, the questionnaire asked them how many education hours should be required for a license if they were forced to pick a single level, rather than two tiers. Here also, the vote split, generally along lines mirroring the length of program each school currently offers. (In this respect, school owners were not significantly different from individual massage therapist members, who mostly tend to support a level close to the education hours they have completed.) While the answer range differed, the median response for both short- and intermediate-hour program schools was 250 hours. For long-hour schools the median was 500 hours. Respondents were then asked, irrespective of their first choice about required educational hours, which among an array of choices as to minimum education hours "would be acceptable" if a single hour level was required. Here are the levels found to be acceptable, by segment and in total:
Our conclusion is that the proposed two-tier education hour approach in the current legislative bill (250 hours for Massage Practitioner, 500 hours for Massage Therapist) remains the vehicle that by far attracts the greatest support of the massage community (massage professionals as well as massage schools). That specific proposal enjoys about three-fourths support by practitioners and nearly two-thirds support by massage school owners. By contrast, based upon consolidation of earlier professional membership association member surveys, slightly fewer than half of practitioners support legislation with a single education requirement at either 250 hours or at 500 hours. Likewise, the only hour levels commanding majority support among school owners -- 250 hours and 500 hours -- each just squeak into majority status at 51%. Registering 49% and 43% support respectively, 200 hours and 300 hours are the only other levels commanding nearly equivalent levels of support. There's clearly no broad appetite for considering a standard either below 200 or above 500 hours. One modest, but important, exception was observed. The sub-group of 13 schools whose primary program length is between 100 and 150 hours did muster support for a higher standard than their current primary programs meet -- 10 would support a line drawn at 200 hours and nine would find 250 hours acceptable. The full array of data reinforces ABMP's preference to continue to advance a two-tier proposal. Queries about support for different single levels of education requirements were a hypothetical exercise. We hope legislative discussions don't come to that. If anything, this new survey stiffens even further our resolve to resist attempts to change the bill to set just one education minimum. California's massage and bodywork training traditions simply are too diverse for that more traditional approach to be an ideal fit. ***** With a participation rate of just 21% for schools, it is important to understand whether answering schools constitute a representative sample of all schools. In a nutshell, schools with longer programs are over-represented (27% of survey response while programs of this length make up 18% of all programs and produce 11% of all massage graduates) ... and shorter programs are under-represented (53% of survey response while actually representing 61% of programs and producing 75% of graduates). This survey response participation pattern is not surprising. Longer program schools mostly are larger and have more substantial administrative support to address matters like completing a questionnaire. Owners of smaller schools often are wearing multiple hats, including a substantial teaching load, and have less time to participate in a survey. Altogether 21% does represent a meaningful slice of the school universe, but the data is a bit skewed toward the views of schools with long programs. Re-weighting of expressed opinions to reflect the full school universe would tend to lessen support for a single tier at 500 hours and increase it for levels in the 200-300 hour range. Referred to school graduation data is taken from Table 2 in Addendum I of the April 30, 2004 ABMP prepared "Sunrise Survey for Regulation of Massage Therapy by the State of California." This table projected graduation rates under a scenario assuming passage of a statewide massage licensing law in late 2005, with licensing beginning in January 2007. Number of Massage Schools and Graduates (Table 2 in Addendum 1) Massage Program Graduates by Education Hours
* Training taken by approximately 1,000 persons a year purely for personal growth or skills acquisition, with no intention to practice massage for compensation. The grouping of massage programs by education hours is taken from Table 4 of an unpublished December 8, 2004 paper by Keith Eric Grant and Jeffrey Forman titled, "Status and Trends in California Massage Education" (which can be found at: www.ramblemuse.com/articles/massage_training_trends.pdf) Grant and Forman were able to obtain program length data from 192 of the then 202 BPPVE "approved schools" (representing 95% of that category), drawing upon August 2004 data from BPPVE supplemented by website information published by additional schools. Entry-Level Massage Programs by Education Hours (Table 4 from "Status and Trends in California Massage Education")
Grant and Forman's selection of school programs was slightly different than ABMP's. Whereas the new ABMP school questionnaire asked schools to provide instructional hours for the "core program from which your school had the largest number of graduates in 2004," Grant and Forman secured data for "entry-level" programs -- "the initial training certificate offered by a school, not including short continuing education programs." From field observations and program description data collected by ABMP, it appears these two approaches likely didn't lead to meaningful differences. Many California schools only offer one program length. For most of the other schools, the shorter-hour entry level program usually has more enrollees and graduates than do longer programs offered by each school. |
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