Immunohistochemical study of proliferating mesenchymal spindle cells in heterogenous soft tissue lesions

Clinics associated with psychology training programs have potential to generate important research data. The expectation that research be experimental in nature has limited the pursuit of research in training clinics. This type of efficacy study is not feasible in most clinics, where too much variation occurs as a result of training and administrative demands. Numerous process-outcome studies have been effectively conducted in training clinics. This article reviews some of these studies, identifies problems related to research in training clinics, and makes recommendations for the development of an enhanced research agenda for training clinics.     

Evaluation activity in psychology training clinics: National survey findings.

Surveyed 74 US psychology training clinics to determine the scope, nature, impact, and problems of evaluation research conducted in these settings. 68% reported current quantitative evaluation of client treatment, and 61% reported current quantitative evaluation of clinical training. A wide variety of specific outcome measures were used with varying frequency. Most evaluation activities were exclusively supported by internal financing, with the clinic director the most likely collector of evaluation data and the clinic staff the most likely recipients of evaluation findings. Major obstacles to evaluation included resource constraints, staff resistance, pragmatic difficulties, and technological limitations. 48% of the directors of clinics conducting treatment evaluation believed evaluation had a significant influence on policy, whereas 42% of those conducting training evaluation reported such influence. Several correlates of policy impact were also identified. Further plans to conduct evaluation were widespread, though not universal. The need for better measures, faculty resistance to evaluation, ways of improving policy impact, and the importance of increased communication across training sites are discussed. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evidence-based practices addressed in community-based children's mental health clinical supervision.

Clinical supervision is the principal method of training for psychotherapeutic practice, however there is virtually no research on supervision practice in community settings. Of particular interest is the role supervision might play in facilitating implementation of evidence-based (EB) care in routine care settings. This study examines the format and functions of clinical supervision sessions in routine care, as well as the extent to which supervision addresses psychotherapeutic practice elements common to EB care for children with disruptive behavior problems, who represent the majority of patients served in publicly funded routine care settings. Supervisors (n = 7) and supervisees (n = 12) from four publicly funded community-based child mental health clinics reported on 130 supervision sessions. Supervision sessions were primarily individual in-person meetings lasting one hour. The most common functions included case conceptualization and therapy interventions. Coverage of practice elements common to EB treatments was brief. Despite the fact that most children presenting to public mental health services are referred for disruptive behavior problems, supervision sessions are infrequently focused on practice elements consistent with EB treatments for this population. Supervision is a promising avenue through which training in EB practices could be supported to improve the quality of care for children in community-based “usual care” clinics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Treatment of mild, moderate, and severe obesity in children.

This paper examines treatment alternatives for children and adolescents as a function of degree of obesity. Treatment for mild obesity (20-40% overweight) should be preventive, emphasizing long-term changes in eating and activity patterns with the goal of weight maintenance and relative weight reduction. Short-term behaviour modification programmes, which include parental support, are effective in achieving these goals. Outpatient clinics or schools where social support is available are appropriate treatment settings. More comprehensive behavioural programmes are needed for treating moderate obesity (41-100% overweight). Such programmes include extended treatment periods, depositrefund contracts, direct parental involvement, and increased emphasis on lifestyle exercise. Outpatient clinics and schools remain optimal treatment settings, but more research is needed on camp settings. Radical treatments such as surgery, drugs, and very low calorie diets cannot be recommended for moderate childhood obesity. Severe obesity (> 100% overweight) requires consideration of radical interventions, and evidence to date supports the experimental use of very low calorie diets (protein-sparing modified fasts) together with behaviour modification. Such dietary treatment must be conducted in hospitals under strict medical supervision. Neither drugs nor surgery can be recommended for severe obesity in children and adolescents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Work groups: From the Hawthorne studies to work teams of the 1990s and beyond.

This article summarizes the Hawthorne studies related to work groups and their legacy and traces applications of work groups and related empirical research through the 1990s. A selective review of empirical studies of work group effectiveness conducted in work settings and published in the last 20 years addresses 4 questions: (a) What identifying features have field researchers used in operationally defining work groups? (b) What research strategies have been used, and to address what kinds of questions? (c) What criteria of work group effectiveness has the field research measured, using what sources of data? (d) What variables have researchers sought to link with measures of work group effectiveness? On the basis of answers to these questions, an agenda for future research about work groups and work teams is suggested. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Problems of service and research in psychology department clinics.

Contends that the training clinic is optimally positioned to facilitate the integration of science and practice in the careers of clinical psychologists and that to achieve this goal some adjustments in procedures may be needed. A review of data provided by 59 former Psychological Service Center (University of Massachusetts—Amherst) patients, 23 clinical psychology graduate students, and 43 clinic directors reveals some problems that training clinics face in the areas of service and research. Service problems are related to client data, termination reasons, limitations of treatment by a trainee, and homogeneity of clients; and research problems include attitude research in the training clinic, data from surveys of graduate students and clinic directors, and reducing obstacles and changing attitudes about research. Some solutions that have been attempted at the University of Massachusetts are reported, and recommendations are made to other clinics that are struggling to maintain high standards of service and to facilitate research while attending concomitantly to the training needs of their clinical students. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reasons for clinical research: Characteristics of contributors and their contributions to the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.

A representative sample of contributors (333) to the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology was asked to report on their motivations for conducting studies that had been published in that journal. Results indicate that the primary motivation of these clinical researchers was to build on prior theory and research through the gathering and analysis of new data to answer socially significant applied-clinical questions. More immediate pragmatic considerations (e.g., tenure, funding, degree or job requirements, and availability of Ss) were reported to be of secondary, but nevertheless significant, importance. Most respondents described the training model in which they had received their doctoral education or oriented toward an integrated scientist-practitioner approach rather than one that focused primarily on research, therapy, or assessment training. It was also found that these clinical researchers rarely conducted investigations in the context of community service or consultation interventions or in order to replicate past research. Results are discussed in light of current controversies in clinical psychology concerning the optimal model for training and the relevance of clinical research. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychologists and rehabilitation: New roles and old training models.

The role of psychologists in physical rehabilitation settings has expanded considerably over the past decades. Unfortunately, the lack of clarity regarding roles, functions, and research of psychologists in inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation settings has hampered efforts to establish guidelines for training graduate students to work in rehabilitative settings. Despite ongoing debate since the Princeton Conference in 1958, no guidelines have been recommended by Division 22 of the American Psychological Association (Division of Rehabilitation Psychology) for training doctoral students in clinical and counseling psychology programs for work in rehabilitation. This article asserts that psychology graduate students who want to work in physical rehabilitation settings should (a) have core training in psychology and (b) receive coursework and practica in working with persons who have chronic illnesses and injuries. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Test of the phase model of psychotherapy in a training clinic.

Recent publications suggest that psychotherapy models generated in outpatient settings do not fully generalize to the training clinic. A possible explanation for these findings is that the nature in which change occurs during psychotherapy may actually differ according to setting. To examine this possibility, the phase model of psychotherapy was tested in an outpatient training clinic. Results partially support the phase model, suggesting that the nature of change during effective psychotherapy within the training clinic setting does not differ from that in other outpatient settings. That is, clients who completed effective courses of treatment in the training clinic environment generally experience an improvement in subjective well-being before evidencing a reduction in symptom distress. Obtaining success in role performances (i.e., work or school) appears to emerge last. Practitioners may enhance treatment outcomes by targeting interventions that are congruent with the phase of the individual client presenting for treatment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Training the clinician as scientist-professional.

Discusses the feasibility of implementing the scientist-professional model for those individuals whose primary career goal is to be a practicing clinician. Although clinical training programs aligning themselves with the scientist-professional model have acknowledged that a certain percentage of their students will ultimately be working in clinical settings, little has been done to train them in how to realize their research potential within a practice-oriented work setting. It is maintained that training programs need to deal with this issue by focusing on the kinds of research questions that may be of potential interest and benefit to practicing clinicians, providing students with actual experience in conducting research within clinical settings, making deliberate efforts to integrate the results of research into actual clinical practice, and training students in how to change the clinical work setting so as to make it more receptive to their research efforts. (11 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Integrating the real and academic worlds: An experienced-based research training model.

Notes that a shift toward more applied settings of employment among research psychologists has focused attention on the need to develop training models to prepare psychologists for careers in applied/evaluative research. A research practicum course sequence is suggested as a training device for developing applied skills during graduate training. The research practica in a doctoral program in applied research and evaluation are described. (4 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Graduate training...in Canada": Comment.

Comments on the original article by Dr. Park O. Davidson (see record 2007-02137-003) on "Graduate training and research funding for clinical psychology in Canada." Davidson has made some excellent recommendations regarding the nature of graduate training and research funding in psychology, and then has negated the effectiveness of such recommendations for social relevancy in community services by ignoring the spectrum of psychological services required and by restricting himself to a rather sterile Eysenckian model. Dr. Davidson's general recommendations regarding graduate training in clinical psychology are sensible and long overdue--less extreme specialization in Ph.D. programs, greater knowledge of problems of applied settings for research, more interdisciplinary training, broader methodology, more effective internship and practicum training, a community psychology program, and more effective bridging research. However when the needed spectrum of services for people is considered, there is an obvious need for psychologists who can share in the assessment and treatment of problems in human functioning beyond the technician level. Manpower needs will never be adequately met until service personnel and University personnel can share in the what, why and how of professional training. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Organization of information in memory and the performance appraisal process: Evidence from the field.

No studies dealing with cognitive processes in performance appraisal have been conducted in field settings, raising questions about the usefulness of this research for practice. The field experiments described here, conducted in 2 organizations, were designed to evaluate interventions that laboratory research has suggested enable raters to better organize performance information in memory: structured diary keeping and structured recall. After these interventions, raters had more positive reactions to the appraisal process, were better able to recall performance information, and produced ratings that were less elevated and better able to discriminate between and within ratees. The implications of these results for practice and for cognitive research in performance appraisal are discussed, along with the limitations of these studies and the problems with criteria for evaluating ratings in the field. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Uses of a computer database to support research-practice integration in a training clinic.

The success of the scientist-practitioner model may depend on the integration of research and practice in primary training settings. Computer databases may help to achieve this goal. This article explains what a database is, describes an example of a research database in a training clinic, and delineates several ways that a database can support clinical research in these settings. In addition to the basic functions of data entry, storage, and retrieval, 3 less obvious functions are described that may be of particular relevance to clinical research: (1) the management and analysis of text, (2) the interactive exploration of patterns in diverse forms of information, and (3) the empirical development of natural classification systems through database design. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Graduate training in statistics, methodology, and measurement in psychology: A survey of PhD programs in North America.

A survey of all PhD programs in psychology in the US and Canada assessed the extent to which advances in statistics, measurement, and methodology have been incorporated into doctoral training. In all, 84% of the 222 departments responded. The statistical and methodological curriculum has advanced little in 20 yrs; measurement has experienced a substantial decline. Typical 1st-yr courses serve well only those students who undertake traditional laboratory research. Training in top-ranked schools differs little from that in other schools. New PhDs are judged to be competent to handle traditional techniques, but not newer and often more useful procedures, in their own research. Proposed remedies for these deficiencies include revamping the basic required quantitative and methodological curriculum, culling available training opportunities across campus, and training students in more informal settings, along with providing retraining opportunities for faculty. These strategies require attention to the human capital needs that support high-quality quantitative and methodological training and practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Applications of the psychotherapy phase model to clinically significant deterioration.

While previous research on deterioration has focused on identifying individuals at risk for negative outcomes, little is known about the nature or pattern by which deterioration occurs. The problem of deterioration is especially salient in training clinics; a setting in which higher deterioration rates have been reported. Two studies were designed to test the applicability of the phase model to deterioration in a training clinic and to replicate the model with a training clinic referral-base sample. In Study 1, the course of therapy was monitored for 135 clients. For the 38 clients who deteriorated during therapy, a model where increased symptoms (demediation) reliably preceded both decreased functioning (dehabilitation) and decreased well-being (demoralization) was found. In Study 2, the same three phases were prospectively monitored for 914 undergraduate students on a weekly basis throughout a single semester. For the 158 individuals who deteriorated during this time, a model where demediation reliably preceded dehabilitation, which preceded demoralization was found. These results have clinical implications for the use of tailored intervention strategies focusing on the deterioration phases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Up close and personal: An inside look at university training programs in school psychology.

This issue of Professional School Psychology marks the third in-depth presentation of a major school psychology training program. While reading these accounts of the development of graduate training programs, one raises the "what if" questions. Raising such questions highlights the complex nature of graduate program development. As we continue to present programs, we will attempt to look further for threads of similarity that connect these unique training settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of task performance, helping, voice, and organizational loyalty on performance appraisal ratings.

Despite the fact that several studies have investigated the relationship between organizational citizenship behavior and performance appraisal ratings, the vast majority of these studies have been cross-sectional, correlational investigations conducted in organizational settings that do not allow researchers to establish the causal nature of this relationship. To address this lack of knowledge regarding causality, the authors conducted 2 studies designed to investigate the effects of task performance, helping behavior, voice, and organizational loyalty on performance appraisal evaluations. Findings demonstrated that each of these forms of behavior has significant effects on performance evaluation decisions and suggest that additional attention should be directed at both voice and organizational loyalty as important forms of citizenship behavior aimed at the organization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)