Issue Of Attrition Research Articles

Revisiting a Provocative Theme: The Attrition of Longer-Term Missionaries

The issue of attrition of longer-term cross-cultural workers is a critical and multifaceted one. We define attrition in its broadest sense as departure from field service by missionaries, regardless of cause. However, our prime concerns related to attrition themes speak to the causes of premature or painful departure from field service. We discovered major attrition variants between newer sending countries (NSC) and older sending countries (OSC). Lessons must be learned from both categories as mission stakeholder groups grapple with their own roles in addressing the causes of attrition as well as reducing it.

ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS OF SOUTH CAROLINA'S JUVENILE CORRECTIONAL OFFICERS, INSIGHT INTO THE TURNOVER EPIDEMIC

ABSTRACT Employee turnover has long been a problematic issue in the field of corrections. In the past, research has attempted to identify causal factors to address the staff attrition issue, but has failed to complete the void of information regarding staff turnover among the juvenile correctional officers. The current study examines juvenile correctional staff's degree of job satisfaction and their retention plans. The multidimensional problem of staff turnover in South Carolina's Department of Juvenile Justice was examined through a secondary analysis utilizing the 1999 Employee Satisfaction Survey. This study revealed the similarities between adult and juvenile correctional staff and why these staff members may potentially leave their jobs. Results from the study revealed the complexity of the turnover problem within this South Carolina agency and supports previous research regarding the turnover problem among adult correctional officers.

Identifying Personality Traits Associated with Attrition in Systematic Training for Effective Parenting Groups

Research has supported the use of the Systematic Training for Effective Parenting (STEP) program when working with families; how-ever, minimal attention has been given to the attrition issue. Given that STEP has been shown to be effective, there is a definite need to identify characteristics of those individuals who are likely to terminate prematurely. A study was conducted comprising 221 subjects to investigate the predictive power of the Basic Adlerian Scales for Interpersonal Success-Adult Form (BASIS-A) in relation to attrition in parenting groups. Results from the study indicated the attrition rate to be higher with individuals who had elevated scores on the Entitlement scale on the BASIS-A than individuals who do not have elevated scores.

Profile of a Group of “Successful” Bilingual Senior High School Students

Student enrollment in French immersion programs in Canada is declining (Commissioner of Official Languages, 1997). This article addresses the issue of attrition and retention in secondary school bilingual programs through the presentation of a descriptive profile of a group of “successful” French immersion high school students. The construction of this profile is supported by the major findings of a qualitative study that investigated reasons why a group of Anglophone students of varying abilities made the decision to continue and complete their high school studies in French immersion (Foster, 1992). By offering this perspective of “success,” the contention here is congruent with what other researchers have claimed (Johnson & Swain, 1997; Tardif & Weber, 1987); consideration must be given to factors other than academic achievement and program limitations when probing the issue of participation levels in this bilingual alternative in high school programming.

Teacher Retention and Attrition in Public Schools: Evidence From SASS91

Teacher retention and attrition were examined by conducting discriminant function analyses on data gathered from the 1990–91 Schools and Staffing Survey and the 1991–92 Teacher Follow-up Survey. The sample size of this study was 3,612 (weighted N = 2,404,592). Among the three groups of teachers who stayed in the same school (stayers), moved to another school voluntarily (movers), or left teaching of their own accord (leavers) between the 1990–91 and 1991–92 school years, stayers can be statistically distinguished from movers and leavers on personal characteristics, school characteristics, and their perceptions of school- and profession-related issues. Policy suggestions based on the findings include building into teaching a career ladder, empowering teachers, providing incentives to teachers working in schools with more disadvantaged students, and taking a multiple-perceptive approach to the issue of teacher retention and attrition.

Characteristics of Freshman Engineering Students: Models for Determining Student Attrition in Engineering

AbstractNationwide, less than half the freshman who start in engineering graduate in engineering, and at least half of this attrition occurs during the freshman year. Clearly, the freshman year is critical for both academic success and retention of engineering students. Such success depends not only on the knowledge and skills learned during this first year, but also on the attitudes individual students bring with them to college. Hence, if these attitudes can be measured before beginning college, we can develop more targeted programs for reducing attrition and improving academic success. Further, by measuring changes in student attitude over the course of the freshman year, we can develop better methods to evaluate engineering education programs.To learn more about these attitudes and how they impact upon retention, we undertook a three‐year research effort. First we identified attitudes incoming students have about the field of engineering, their perceptions about the upcoming educational experience, and their confidence in their ability to succeed in engineering. These attitudes were then related to performance and retention in the freshman engineering program. To accomplish this, a closedform survey was developed, tested and administered to the 1993–94 and 1994–95 freshman engineering classes. This study demonstrated that student attitudes can provide an effective means for evaluating aspects of our freshman engineering program, particularly those relating to issues of attrition. Specifically, students who left the freshman engineering program in “good academic standing” had significantly different attitudes about engineering and themselves than those possessed by other comparison groups: students who stayed in engineering and students who left engineering in “poor academic standing.”We developed regression models to predict attrition and performance in our freshman engineering program using quantified measures of student attitudes. Implementation of the models has allowed freshman advisors to better inform students of opportunities that engineering offers, to devise better programs of study that take advantage of students' varied interests, and to set retention goals that are more realistic.

Student discontinuation at a technological higher education institution∗

Abstract This Research project addresses the issue of attrition of tertiary education students. The focus of this project was the personal, demographic, institutional and environmental factors associated with leaving the institution prior to the completion of the academic program in which the student had enrolled. It is expected that this project will provide some guide‐lines and strategies for implementation to increase student retention and provide data on the extent and nature of student attrition at this institution. This is an important area for research, as it provides critical comment from the ‘customers’ of a higher education institution's environment and the services provided. For future planning for tertiary education student comment is critical to provide policy and planning directions.

Cognitive?behavioral group treatment for social phobia: Effectiveness at five-year followup

Empirical studies of the behavioral or cognitive—behavioral treatment of social phobia have appeared with increasing frequency over the last decade, and there is reason for cautious optimism in the evaluation of treatment effectiveness. However, few studies have reported systematic followup data, and there is little information available about the durability of change in treated social phobics. We report on the followup evaluation of cognitive—behavioral group therapy (CBGT) for social phobia. Patients who received CBGT or a credible alternative treatment were recontacted after a period of 4.5 to 6.25 years and completed a battery of self-report questionnaires, an individualized behavioral test, and a structured interview with an independent assessor. Patients who received CBGT remained more improved than alternative treatment patients on measures from all assessment modalities. However, due to the long followup period, only a portion of the original study sample could be assessed, and these patients may have been less severely impaired than patients who did not participate in the long-term followup. Limitations of the current study and issues of sample attrition in the conduct of long-term followup studies are discussed.

Inpatient vs outpatient treatment for substance dependence revisited

Miller and Hester's 1986 review of inpatient versus outpatient alcohol treatment studies concluded with no "justification" for inpatient treatment. Further examination of these studies revealed shortcomings such as the use of random assignment designs which excluded psychiatrically-complicated patients. Carrier Foundation's inpatient/outpatient study of private psychiatric patients with alcohol and/or cocaine dependence includes a patient-treatment matching design to address weaknesses in the existing literature. Patients with high psychiatric severity and/or a poor social support system are predicted to have a better outcome in inpatient treatment, while patients with low psychiatric severity and/or a good social support system may do well as outpatients without incurring the higher costs of inpatient treatment. Preliminary results from 183 inpatients and 120 outpatients indicated outpatients, regardless of level of psychiatric severity, were 4 times more likely to be early treatment failures (chi-square = 41.2, df = 1, p < .01). While the determination of long-term follow-up status of early treatment failures is currently underway, this finding underscores the potential risk of early treatment failure in outpatient compared to inpatient substance abuse treatment programs and the importance of addressing the issue of early attrition in conducting outcome analyses.

Few-wave vs. continuous consumer panels: Some issues of attrition, bias and variance

In econometrics, the word “panel” refers to a research design in which respondents answer the same questions at least twice, with the reporting occasions separated by a suitable interval of time. Occasionally a panel fitting this minimal definition is used for ad hoc marketing study. But the greatest part of advertisers' panel research spending goes to ongoing (usually syndicated) panels of the diary or scanner type. In this paper we argue that continual-wave panels are qualitatively different from “econometric-type” panels. Consequently, there is danger in carrying over research results from two-wave studies into the world of continual-wave consumer panels. We argue that greater attention must be given to variance than to bias in analyzing consumer panel data of the latter type, and report some new formulae for the variance of market measures under different panel reporting options. Some guidelines for panel users ensue.

Occupational Considerations for the Prehospital Care Provider

Contemporary prehospital personnel are facing the major issues of infectious disease exposure, malpractice, attrition, and career opportunities in their challenging and demanding profession. Successful prehospital emergency medicine is contingent not only on the effective and efficient functioning of the entire EMS system, but most important, on the sound performance of each prehospital care provider. For the emergency physician, awareness, understanding, and appreciation of the important occupational considerations confronting prehospital care providers are essential.

Case attrition in the juvenile court: An application of the crime control model

Although many aspects of the juvenile justice process have been studied in recent years, little attention has been given to the issue of case attrition—the loss of cases referred to the juvenile court through intake or judicial dismissals. This study examines case attrition in a metropolitan court, the types of cases lost, and the reasons for dismissal. Findings indicate that many serious crime cases are dismissed because of petitioner and/or witness actions. Methods of addressing this problem are discussed.

Selective subject attrition in a longitudinal study of head-injured veterans.

Recent longitudinal studies of aging have suggested that intellectually inferior subjects selectively drop out during the course of the investigation. This issue of subject attrition was addressed in a neuropsychological study of 314 veterans who had sustained head or peripheral nerve injuries in World War II. These men were examined originally by Teuber and his colleagues at New York University in the 1940s and 1950s, and the veterans' participation was sought for a 40-year follow-up study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the current follow-up study, the veterans were subdivided according to their response to recent recruitment letters: those who agreed to be retested, those with whom recent contact was established but who declined to participate, those who did not reply to our correspondence, and those who were deceased. Those who agreed to be retested in the 1980s had significantly more education and achieved significantly higher Army General Classification Test scores both before and after injury than did the untested cohort. Even with the selective subject attrition, however, the remaining sample represented a broad range of intellectual competence.