Graduate training in clinical psychology: Student perspectives on selecting a program.

Although graduate programs in clinical psychology spend considerable energy and resources selecting students, there is limited information regarding the factors students consider important when they choose a training program. A review of recent literature found one study that looked at how first-year graduate students rated the importance of a number of factors in their decision-making process when selecting a clinical psychology training program (Walfish, Stenmark, Shealy, & Shealy, 1989). The current study extends this research by comparing reports from first-year graduate students enrolled in traditional “Boulder model” programs with those enrolled in professional “Vail model” programs. As part of a larger survey project, students answered questions about factors they considered important when they made decisions about applying to and selecting a graduate program to attend. Responses from students enrolled in traditional programs were compared with students attending professional programs. These differences are discussed, as well as their implications for program directors engaged in student recruitment and selection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A physician group's movement toward electronic health records: A case study using the transtheoretical model for organizational change.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 authorized the distribution of $34 billion through Medicare and Medicaid as adoption incentives to qualified providers to implement and use certified Electronic Health Records (EHR). In the case study presented here, which followed the transtheoretical model (TTM), employees of a multispecialty physician group were asked about their movement to EHR. The employees were part of a multispecialty physician group with 17 different offices and 73 providers in the greater south central Pennsylvania area. Sixteen employees from the physician group participated in a one-on-one interview. Interview questions were designed to identify actions that define successful EHR implementation, readiness to take actions toward successful EHR implementation, pros and cons of EHR implementation, and classification of change processes being utilized to move the multispecialty group toward successful EHR implementation. Interview data provided preliminary evidence of the applicability of the TTM to studies of EHR implementation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

If at first you don't succeed: False hopes of self-change.

Despite repeated failure at attempts to change aspects of their behavior, people make frequent attempts at self-change. The generally negative outcome of many such self-change efforts makes it difficult to understand why so many individuals persist at these attempts. The authors have described this cycle of failure and renewed effort as a "false hope syndrome" characterized by unrealistic expectations about the likely speed, amount, ease, and consequences of self-change attempts. In this article, the authors further develop their conceptualization of this syndrome and review its evidential basis. They review the reasons why so many people tend to fail in their self-change attempts and then examine how people interpret these failures in such a way that they are led to keep trying repeatedly despite apparently overwhelming odds. Finally, the authors discuss the psychological consequences of repeated failure and analyze the distinction between confidence and overconfidence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The increasing role of psychology health research and interventions and a vision for the future.

Psychology is on the cusp of becoming a major contributor to the health of the people living in the United States. Over the past 50 years, psychology research and psychologically based interventions and prevention strategies have increasingly influenced the health of people and health care services in the United States. In this article, the authors review briefly the first 40 years of psychology's development as a health profession. An overview of the accelerating changes for psychological involvement in health since the millennium follows. Then, a vision for the future is presented. This article has as its theoretical base a biopsychosocialcultural model of health that places increasing influence on the role of culture, which includes race, ethnicity, social class, gender, physical ablebodiness, and developmental age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contributions of psychology to limiting climate change.

Psychology can make a significant contribution to limiting the magnitude of climate change by improving understanding of human behaviors that drive climate change and human reactions to climate-related technologies and policies, and by turning that understanding into effective interventions. This article develops a framework for psychological contributions, summarizes what psychology has learned, and sets out an agenda for making additional contributions. It emphasizes that the greatest potential for contributions from psychology comes not from direct application of psychological concepts but from integrating psychological knowledge and methods with knowledge from other fields of science and technology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attitude change through reward of verbal behavior.

"72 Ss were induced to engage in debates on 3 different issues, taking sides opposite to those which they had indicated as their own in an opinion pretest. Half of the Ss were rewarded, in a predetermined order, by a purported vote which proclaimed them the better debators, while the other half were punished by presumably losing the debate. Posttests of Ss' opinions showed a tendency of the 'winners' to change their opinions in the direction of their debates, while the 'losers' did not change significantly. A control group of nondebators likewise showed no significant change in opinions." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of a management practicum in a clinical psychology program.

A pilot program providing practicum training in management in an accredited clinical psychology doctoral program is described. The clinical management practicum program at George Fox University is compared and contrasted with the one described at West Virginia University (M. J. Zvolensky, A. D. Herschell, & D. W. McNeil, 2000). Training objectives and methods in clinical management are provided. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A real-time assessment of work stress in physicians and nurses.

Objective: This study adapted ecological momentary assessment methods to: (a) examine differences in work stress between nurses and physicians, and (b) to study relationships between work stress, work activity patterns, and sleep. Design: A total of 185 physicians and 119 nurses (206 women, 98 men) working in four teaching hospitals participated in an observational study of work stress. Main Outcome Measures: Participants carried handheld computers that randomly prompted them for work activity, patient load, and work stress information. Results: Participants completed more than 9,500 random interval surveys during the study (an average of 30.8 surveys per person-week). Approximately 85% of all surveys were completed in full (73.3%) or partially (11.6%). Emotional stress scores among physicians were nearly 50% higher (26.9[19.0]) than those of nurses (18.1[14.9], r[302] = .37, p rs[159] = .14-.26, ps ps r[302] = ?.12, .17, ps Conclusions: The findings identify patterns of work stress in relationship to work activities, sleep habits, and provider differences that may be used to assist ongoing hospital work reform efforts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sport psychology training within a clinical psychology program and a department of intercollegiate athletics.

Many applicants to clinical and counseling psychology programs are interested in receiving the training needed to practice competently in the professional specialty area of sport psychology. In this article, the authors describe a collaborative training and service relationship between an APA-accredited clinical psychology program and an intercollegiate athletics department. Sport Psychology Services provides performance enhancement, program evaluation, and mental health services to the athletic department. In return, graduate students receive applied training, financial support, and opportunities to conduct research. The authors present program evaluation data and offer practical guidelines to graduate programs wishing to establish similar training opportunities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Moving toward a broader model of health care.

This article looks at how we can move toward a broader model of health care. It discusses advances in U.S. health care, the issue of health care coverage for all Americans, the need for a biopsychosocial model of health care, and the impact that psychologists can make in improving health. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A model of stage of change to recommend colonoscopy among urban primary care physicians.

Theory is little used in the prediction of physician cancer screening stage of change. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate the theoretical predictors of stage of change to recommend colonoscopy among 235 urban physicians. Constructs from the theory of planned behavior, social-cognitive theory, and the transtheoretical model were systematically tested. As predicted, contextual factors, such as the physicians' ages, their race-ethnicities, patient race-ethnicity, and office-related barriers to preventive care were associated with stage of change through self-efficacy, normative beliefs, and negative behavioral beliefs. The findings demonstrate the relevance of these models to studying the behavior of physicians and support the development of interventions that are tailored to normative beliefs and specific physician cognitions for colonoscopy recommendation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Social psychology, an interdisciplinary approach.

Reviews the book, Social psychology, an interdisciplinary approach by Hubert Bonner (1953). According to the reviewer, it has been argued that most textbooks in the social sciences are really written from other textbooks in the same area. Bonner's text seems singularly invulnerable to this complaint. The author has brought together materials from an unusually wide variety of sources and organized them into a book which shows definite signs of some original thinking about how a text in social psychology should be put together, and what should go into it. The reviewer states that in general, Bonner's theoretical position is, for today, not an especially distinctive one. The extent of his concern with the social and cultural context within which behavior occurs, however, is unusual and can be conveyed only in part by the headings of the three main divisions of his book: Social Interaction, the social matrix of behavior; Culture and Behavior, cultural values and personal-social adjustment; Group Dynamics, social change and collective behavior. The reviewer states that this book is particularly useful for students who are interested in getting an understanding of social behavior within the scope of a single course, and who do not intend to do advanced work in the social sciences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A study of admissions procedures to a PhD program in psychology.

A study of admissions procedures in the PhD program of the psychology department of the University of Michigan indicated that the department did not discriminate against women during the 1969–1970 academic year. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The psychology of life stories.

Recent years have witnessed an upsurge of interest among theorists and researchers in autobiographical recollections, life stories, and narrative approaches to understanding human behavior and experience. An important development in this context is D. P. McAdams's life story model of identity (1985; see also records 1993-97296-000 and 1996-06098-001), which asserts that people living in modern societies provide their lives with unity and purpose by constructing internalized and evolving narratives of the self. The idea that identity is a life story resonates with a number of important themes in developmental, cognitive, personality, and cultural psychology. This article reviews and integrates recent theory and research on life stories as manifested in investigations of self-understanding, autobiographical memory, personality structure and change, and the complex relations between individual lives and cultural modernity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evidence-based parent and family interventions in school psychology: A commentary.

Do the authors provide us with convincing evidence that parent and family interventions change children's behavior and learning at school? The answer is not a simple or straightforward one. First off, there appears to be more support for interventions that are part of a multi-component program, that are highly focused in scope, and that entail active collaboration between parents, students, and the schools; hence, more support appears to be available for family/parent consultation and family-school collaboration/partnership programs than for the more unidirectional and limited parent education and parent involvement programs. Second, although 100 studies are examined, it is readily apparent that the studies reported on in the various reviews are characterized by numerous methodological shortcomings that compromise their scientific integrity and the conclusions we can safely draw from them. Third, it is evident that nearly all of the efficacious treatments are behavior or cognitive-behavioral ones. Fourth and finally, it will be important to begin to identify the students, families, and schools that are most likely to benefit from the various interventions and to examine the specific mechanisms of change in each of the proposed interventions. In sum, it seems safe to conclude that evidentiary support for the effectiveness of parent and family interventions in school psychology is mixed at best. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predictive validity of the Graduate Record Examination in a clinical psychology program.

Previous research on the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) has been plagued by the problem of restricted ranges resulting from the failure of low scorers to gain admission to graduate programs. This difficulty did not obtain with the present sample of 105 clinical students, which included a number of minority students admitted without consideration for their GRE scores. Two criterion variables were used, both reflecting students' performance while in graduate school: number of failed preliminary examinations ("prelims") and a composite reflecting efficient and competent progress through the program. Both variables were significantly predicted from the GRE, particularly from the Advanced Psychology test (both at p?     

Developing a VA counselling psychology training program: a case history of university-hospital cooperation.

"… APA-approved training programs have been organized in an increasing number of universities in cooperation with nearby VA training hospitals." The first such university-VA hospital training program involved Columbia University's Teachers College and the VA training unit for Metropolitan New York. The selection of trainees, the integration of university training and VA traineeships, the success of the training, and the role, responsibilities, and privileges of consultants in this particular program are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The reliability and validity of a multicultural assessment instrument developed for a graduate program in psychology.

The Diversity Mission Evaluation Questionnaire (DMEQ) was developed to assess attitudes, beliefs, and experiences pertaining to multicultural matters at a graduate program in psychology. Using scores of 247 students, 57 faculty, and 19 staff, the authors revealed three latent traits through exploratory factor analysis: Overall Success, Open Discussion of Diversity Issues, and belief that multicultural activities were Freely Undertaken. The high internal consistency of all of these scales, (as > .81), coupled with expected between-groups differences and significant correlations with experiences of prejudice, suggests that the instrument assessed diversity issues in a precise and valid manner. It was concluded that the DMEQ could be used by institutions desiring to assess their multicultural climates. Evaluative data from a graduate school that has adopted and implemented a diversity mission are presented, and issues related to multicultural change are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)