Rolling Admissions Research Articles

Attachment Dimensions and Group Climate Growth in a Sample of Women Seeking Treatment for Eating Disorders

Adult attachment and group process research are emerging areas of research for treating eating disorders. In this study, we examined several aspects of group processes: the weekly growth of group therapy climate, the relationship between group climate growth and outcomes, and the impact of the group on individual experiences of group climate. Further, we assessed the relationship between adult attachment dimensions and these group processes. Women (n = 264) diagnosed with an eating disorder completed attachment scales pre-treatment, eating disorder symptom scales pre- and post-treatment, and group climate scales weekly during treatment. Treatment consisted of a specialized eating disorders group-based day hospital program with rolling admissions. Engaged group climate increased and Avoidance group climate decreased across weeks of treatment. Engaged group climate growth was associated with improved eating disorder symptoms post-treatment. Higher attachment avoidance at pre-treatment was related to lower Engaged group climate at week 1, and was related to a greater impact of the group on the individual’s experience of group engagement. Clinicians might improve group processes and outcomes by tailoring interventions to individuals’ attachment avoidance when treating women for eating disorders.

Нейронные сети как средство модификации метода скользящего допуска

A new approach to solving optimization problems corroding structures based on the adaptation of the method of rolling admission. As a criterion for moving the tolerance shall be the maximum permissible error of calculation functions of restrictions, which provides trained neural network

Analysis of rolling group therapy data using conditionally autoregressive priors

Group therapy is a central treatment modality for behavioral health disorders such as alcohol and other drug use (AOD) and depression. Group therapy is often delivered under a rolling (or open) admissions policy, where new clients are continuously enrolled into a group as space permits. Rolling admissions policies result in a complex correlation structure among client outcomes. Despite the ubiquity of rolling admissions in practice, little guidance on the analysis of such data is available. We discuss the limitations of previously proposed approaches in the context of a study that delivered group cognitive behavioral therapy for depression to clients in residential substance abuse treatment. We improve upon previous rolling group analytic approaches by fully modeling the interrelatedness of client depressive symptom scores using a hierarchical Bayesian model that assumes a conditionally autoregressive prior for session-level random effects. We demonstrate improved performance using our method for estimating the variance of model parameters and the enhanced ability to learn about the complex correlation structure among participants in rolling therapy groups. Our approach broadly applies to any group therapy setting where groups have changing client composition. It will lead to more efficient analyses of client-level data and improve the group therapy research community's ability to understand how the dynamics of rolling groups lead to client outcomes.

Expanding schooling opportunities for 4-year-olds

We use a novel quasi-experimental strategy to estimate the effect of expanding early schooling enrollment possibilities on early achievement. It exploits two features of the school system in The Netherlands. The first is rolling admissions; children are allowed to start school immediately after their 4th birthday instead of at the beginning of the school year. The second is that children having their birthday before, during and after the summer holiday are placed in the same class. These features generate sufficient exogenous variation in children’s enrollment opportunities to identify its effects on test scores. Making available one additional month of time in school increases language scores of disadvantaged pupils by 6 percent of a standard deviation and their math scores by 5 percent of a standard deviation. For non-disadvantaged pupils we find no effect.

Baccalaureate Nursing Program Admission Policies: Promoting Success or Facilitating Failure?

To increase enrollment in baccalaureate nursing programs, various admission strategies have been used, including rolling admission policies and multiple admissions during an academic year. However, it is not known how these admission practices affect student preparedness for, or success within, the nursing major. The purpose of this study was to describe and compare two cohorts of first semester nursing students who were admitted under a policy of rolling admissions. The study used an exploratory descriptive design with 173 sophomore students, 103 of whom comprised the fall cohort and 70 of whom comprised the winter cohort. The data revealed that baccalaureate nursing program admission policies do affect the quality of students admitted and the academic outcomes they attain. The implications of this study's findings are that admission policies with the potential to maximize student success within the nursing major are needed.

Analytic methods for modeling longitudinal data from rolling therapy groups with membership turnover.

Interventions for a variety of emotional and behavioral problems are commonly delivered in the context of treatment groups, with many using rolling admission to sustain membership (i.e., admission, dropout, and discharge from group are perpetual and ongoing). The authors present an overview of the analytic challenges inherent in rolling group data and outline commonly used (but flawed) analytic and design approaches to addressing (or sidestepping) these issues. Moreover, the authors propose use of latent class pattern mixture models (LCPMMs) as a statistically and conceptually defensible approach for modeling treatment data from rolling groups. The LCPMM approach is illustrated with rolling group data from a group-based alcoholism pilot treatment trial (N = 128). Different inferences were made with regard to treatment efficacy under LCPMM vs. the commonly used standard group-clustered latent growth model (LGM); coupled with other preliminary findings in this area, inferences from LGMs may be overly liberal when applied to data from rolling groups. Continued work on data analytic difficulties in groups with membership turnover is critical for furthering the ecological validity of research on behavioral treatments.

A Survey of Master's-Level Psychology Programs: Admissions Criteria and Program Policies

This study summarizes the admission and program characteristics of American master's-level graduate programs housed in psychology departments. Individual programs (N = 253) from 163 colleges and universities provided data, including the use of grade point average, Graduate Record Exam scores, and other tests (Psychology Graduate Record Exam, Miller Analogies Test, Test of English as a Foreign Language) for admission, as well as the importance of recommendation letters, interviews, research experience, practical experience, and personal statements. Additional information obtained included undergraduate course requirements, number of students accepted, admission caps, probationary admission, a strict deadline for admission, and rolling admission. Respondents also reported basic program characteristics, including length of program; use of thesis, comps, or practicum; removal policies; and the percentage of students obtaining licenses and continuing into a doctoral program.

A cautionary note

I am concerned that the hope of preventing second and higher order pregnancies to teenage mothers Klerman and colleagues' recent report [1] raises will spark a flurry of costly, time and labor intensive investments in home visitation programs. While this intervention strategy may prove beneficial for other reasons. [2], two consideration should give us pause about its unique utility as a solution to this tenacious problem. First, although the three interventions the authors compare were randomized trials, the populations that were randomized were very different. Teens could only enter the postpartum phase of the nurse home visitation trials at delivery [2]. By contrast, many of those randomized in the other two trials were already 6- to-9 months postpartum when the Klerman life-table time-clock started [3]. By eliminating some of those at highest risk for conception and capturing others at a point in their reproductive careers where they may have already experienced contraceptive side-effects or boyfriend cajoling that make the consequences of conception less onerous than those of daily contraceptive use this “rolling admissions” policy creates a selection bias, the effects of which are impossible to estimate. Because this methodologic problem calls the validity of these trials into question, it will be critical to level the playing field before dismissing the intervention strategies they were designed to test. Secondly, while the gain in the “Memphis” trial was statistically significant, with at least 20% of those in the intervention group conceiving during the first and 42% during the second postpartum year, (incident rates comparable to those quoted nationally in the absence of any intervention [4]), it is far less impressive from a clinical standpoint. Indeed the findings have been sufficiently consistently so across the various trials of this intervention [2], that based on the results of the present analysis it seems safest to conclude that intensive pre- and post-natal home visitation is not the key to this Pandoran box. Nonetheless because the therapeutically optimal combination of incentives and disincentives remains elusive I agree with the authors that we need to continue to ask why. However the critical question is not the one they pose: “Why (do) teenage mothers choose to have closely spaced second births ?” (1), (most will say they don't and the conversation will likely stop there [5]). Rather what we need to ask ourselves and our teenage patients is why these young women whose carefully braided hair and beautifully acryliced nails testify to their cognitive capacity for deductive reasoning and future-oriented planning are unwilling to take the steps necessary to prevent conceptions they say they and their boyfriends, at a minimum wish to postpone.

Analysis of dynamic cohort data.

Left-truncated and interval-censored data, termed dynamic cohort data, arise in longitudinal studies with rolling admissions and only occasional follow-up. The authors compared four approaches for analyzing such data: a constant hazard model; maximum likelihood estimation with flexible parametric models; the midpoint method, in which the midpoint of the last negative and first positive test result is used in a Cox proportional hazards model that accounts for left truncation; and a semiparametric method that uses imputed failure times in the Cox model. By using a simulation study, they assessed the performance of these approaches under conditions that can arise in observational studies: changes in disease incidence and changes in the underlying population. The simulation results indicated that the constant hazard model and midpoint method were inadequate and that the flexible parametric model was useful when enough parameters were used in modeling the baseline hazard. The semiparametric method ensured correct parameter (odds ratio) estimation when the baseline hazard was misspecified, but the trade-off increased computational complexity. In this paper, a study of the incidence of human immunodeficiency virus in patients repeatedly tested for the virus at a sexually transmitted disease clinic in New Orleans, Louisiana, illustrates the methods used.

The effect of a rolling admission policy on a medical school's selection of applicants.

As the University of Kentucky College of Medicine (UKCM) employs a rolling admission policy, this study was designed to determine (1) whether the month during which applicants were considered by the UKCM admission committee was associated with admission status, (2) whether applicants considered early in the process differed in selected academic and noncognitive pre-admission characteristics in comparison with later applicants, and (3) what the importance of the month of the applicant's consideration was relative to other predictors of admission to UKCM. The application files and admission committee's minutes regarding 302 applicants who received interviews during the 1993-94 application cycle were examined. Data reviewed included each applicant's gender, age, geographic origin, undergraduate science and non-science grade-point averages, and Medical College Admission Test scores; the date of consideration by the committee; interviewers' ratings; the initial motion on the applicant; and the final admission status. The findings indicate that the applicants considered earlier were significantly more likely to gain admission. However, upon assigning the applicants to three groups according to the month of consideration, no difference in academic qualifications was found. Regression analyses revealed that despite the effect of time of consideration, noncognitive characteristics related to UKCM's mission also predicted admission decisions. This study provides useful information to admission committees reviewing the effect of a rolling admission policy, as well as to applicants and premedical advisors, who should be aware of the potential importance of submitting applications in a timely manner.