The emphasis, both in prisons and the community is usually on rehabilitation and prevention of recidivism. Industrial or organizational psychologists are in business, industry, private consulting and government. They do research on employees, perform appraisals on them, advise on employee morale, satisfaction and efficiency and submit results to senior management. They devise tests or validate existing tests which may then be used to assess prospective employees or current employees who wish to apply for advanced positions. Often the psychometric assessment instruments and the behavioural rating scales used are unique to the problems encountered by a particular business, department or industry.
Research psychologists work in universities or private companies.
The kind of research they do depends on the career choice they made from among the many subfields within psychology. University faculty may work on problems with no immediate practical application, but they also teach with the object of training future psychologists. Sometimes university psychologists do consulting work or act as private practitioners outside the university. Company psychologists would normally work on problems of interest to their industry. Positions on a university faculty almost always demand a doctorate.