This quantitative study investigated relationships among and between university early and late admitted freshmen and academic performance and persistence. The participants in this study consisted of 3,197 early freshmen applicants and 309 late freshmen applicants admitted at a large southwestern student centered public research university over the course of the year prior to the fall 2008 academic year. Significant results, using a statistical significance level of p < .05, were reported for the majority of variables examined: chi-square analysis revealed a significant relationship between application date and ethnicity; independent-samples t-tests revealed significant differences in SAT scores; 78.06% of late applicants were male compared to 40.83% of early applicants; mean GPA of early applicants was 2.62 compared to 2.18 among those who applied late; and lastly, 76.62% of early applicants returned the following year in comparison to 57.42% of late applicants. The results of this study provide preliminary support for the examination of admission policies and procedures in relation to late application. Recommendations are made for advising, counseling, and other interventions that may ease the transition of freshmen late applicants while enhancing retention and persistence.

This pilot study investigated the impact of group activity play therapy (GAPT) on displaced orphans aged 10 to 12 years living in a large children.s village in Uganda. Teachers and housemothers identified 60 preadolescents exhibiting clinical levels of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. The participants ethnicity was African and included an equal number of females and males. Participants were randomly assigned to GAPT (n = 30) or reading mentoring (RM; n = 30), which served as an active control. Preadolescents in both treatment groups participated in an average of 16 sessions, twice weekly with each session lasting 50 minutes. Sessions were held in the school located within the village complex. A two (group) by two (repeated measures) split plot ANOVA was used to analyze the data. According to teacher reports using the Teacher Report Form (TRF) and housemother reports using the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), children receiving the GAPT intervention demonstrated statistically significant decreases (p < .025) in internalizing behaviors (TRF: p < .001; CBCL: p < .001 ) and externalizing behaviors (TRF: p = .006; CBCL: p < .001) from pretest to posttest compared to children who received RM. The GAPT intervention demonstrated a large treatment effect on reducing …

This phenomenological study examined the experiences and perceptions of child-centered play therapists who deliver shortened sessions in the clinic setting. Using the phenomenological analysis procedures based on Moustakas' modified Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen method, a coding team of three doctoral students found 10 themes related to child-centered play therapists' (N = 5) experiences delivering shortened session lengths. Each theme is defined and further described using verbatim transcript examples. This study has practical and clinical implications for child-centered play therapist development and training. The results of this study point to the need for further research in child-centered play therapists' experiences delivering play therapy-as-usual. Finally, future research regarding the change process in child-centered play therapy theory is also implicated.

A randomized controlled trial study was conducted to test the effectiveness of 16 sessions of the modalities of individual and group child-centered play therapy (CCPT) on improving social-emotional assets, including self-regulation/responsibility, social competence, and empathy. Participants were 56 students in four urban elementary schools in north central Texas, referred by teachers for disruptive or problematic behavior: 10 female and 46 male; ages 5 to 10 years with mean age 7.12; and 21 identifying as Hispanic, 17 as White, 8 as Multiracial, 1 as Asian, and 9 unspecified. Teachers and parents completed the Social and Emotional Assets and Resilience Scale (SEARS; Merrill, 2011) at pre- and post-treatment. With a significance criterion of p< .05, teacher reports provided no statistically significant results. However, parent reports indicated a statistically and practically significant interaction effect with a medium to large effect size, indicating a substantial improvement in children's scores from pre- to post-test attributed to group assignment. Mean differences indicated substantial gains in overall social-emotional assets, according to Total scores, in both individual and group treatment conditions as compared to the waitlist control group. Additionally, both individual and group play therapy was correlated with significant improvement with a large effect for the constructs of …

Early childhood is a critical period during which children develop social-emotional competence that will affect future success. Developing social-emotional assets is of importance for kindergarten children because of their concurrent cognitive and social changes as well as the experience of transitioning from home to school environment. A growing number of schools have adopted social-emotional learning (SEL) programming to focus on fostering children’s prosocial behaviors through direct instruction and engaging activities in classroom settings. However, some researchers have proposed that learning should capitalize on children’s natural interests rather than adult-determined agendas. Based on theoretical assumptions regarding potential effectiveness of child-centered group play therapy (CCGPT) as a treatment modality, I sought to explore the effects of CCGPT on social-emotional assets of kindergarten children utilizing parent and teacher reports across pretest, posttest, and one-month follow-up. Additionally, given that group sizes have been inconsistent and rarely explored across previous studies, I investigated the therapeutic aspect of group sizes in CCGPT outcome by comparing 2-member and 3-member CCGPT groups. Forty-three participants with mean age of 5.14 were recruited from three elementary schools, including 19 Hispanic, 14 Caucasian, and 10 African American. Twenty-one participants were randomly assigned to the intervention group receiving a mean of 15.32 …