Sexual and Gender Minority College Student Retention: The Unique Effects of Mental Health and Campus Environment on the Potential for Dropout

Background: While limited data has been collected, some findings show that sexual and gender minority (SGM) students are at higher risk for dropping out of college than their peers. Research on issues such as campus connectedness and mental health among this population indicates both may affect retention.  Aim: This study examined how mental health and perceptions of campus connectedness may mediate the relationship between SGM identification and intentions to drop out of college. Methods: Survey data collected from 1,793 randomly selected students across eight different public universities in Mississippi were used to conduct a parallel mediation analysis.   Results: Mediation analyses indicated that there was a significant direct effect of SGM identity on intentions to drop out, and that both mediators had a significant indirect effect. Psychiatric symptoms had a relatively larger indirect effect than campus connectedness. Conclusions: These results contribute to the limited quantitative literature on SGM student retention, supporting previous work indicating these students are at higher risk of attrition. The results suggest that student retention may be bolstered if access to SGM-competent mental health services is provided. Additionally, campuses should continue to support SGM-friendly policies and create inclusive spaces as a protective resource for students

Does Gambling-Focused Treatment Affect Mental Health and Quality of Life? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract: Cognitive-behavioral (CB) techniques have received substantial empirical support for reducing gambling disorder symptoms and behavior. What has not been established is whether gambling-focused treatment reduces psychological problems and improves quality of life. Individuals experiencing gambling-related harms report that sustained recovery involves changing both gambling behaviors and psychological problems and building a meaningful life. The current systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to examine the effect of CB techniques targeting gambling harms on nontargeted outcomes such as psychological problems and quality of life. Following PRISMA guidelines, a systematic article search was conducted to locate published studies of randomized controlled trials of CB techniques targeting gambling harms and reporting nontargeted outcomes. Random effects meta-analysis was used to quantify the effect of CB techniques on nontargeted outcomes. Ten studies representing 797 participants were included. Eight studies reported the effect of CB techniques on anxiety, 8 on depression, 3 on substance use, and 7 on quality of life. CB techniques significantly reduced anxiety (g = -0.44), depression (g = -0.35), gambling frequency (g = -0.30), and gambling intensity (g = -0.36) at posttreatment, but not substance use. CB techniques also significantly improved quality of life (g = 0.39) at posttreatment. Implications: The targeted reduction of gambling harms may serve as a mechanism of change for reducing psychological problems and improving quality of life. Future studies should employ longitudinal designs to understand the associations between gambling reductions and changes in nontargeted recovery outcomes over time

A study of patent thickets

Report analysing whether entry of UK enterprises into patenting in a technology area is affected by patent thickets in the technology area

Practice and Dissemination of Motivational Interviewing: A Psychology Internship Curriculum

Sufficient training in substance use issues has been identified as a common gap in professional psychology graduate training. Satisfactory training in evidence-based practices has also been identified as a common gap for providers who care for individuals with substance use problems. The \u27practice and dissemination\u27 curriculum we developed seeks to address both of these gaps during the predoctoral internship training year by first training psychology interns to competently deliver motivational interviewing (MI) to individuals with substance use problems and then train community providers and volunteers to do so. From 2012–2013, a total of 55 community providers and volunteers from a homeless shelter, a substance use treatment facility, and a community mental health facility received training in MI through this curriculum by attending continuing education events delivered by 17 psychology interns. Evaluation of the dissemination portion of the curriculum as part of an exempt educational research project revealed that community providers were able to achieve significant increases in MI knowledge, readiness to implement MI, and MI skill as assessed with a video analogue measure by the end of the workshop. They also reported satisfaction with the workshop. These evaluation findings provide preliminary support for the curriculum as a novel and efficacious way to disseminate MI to community providers. Research is necessary to determine long-term outcomes of such training and to identify strategies to overcome potential barriers such as the substantial faculty effort necessary to implement the intensive curriculum. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved

Dropout From Face-To-Face, Multi-Session Psychological Treatments for Problem and Disordered Gambling: a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Objective: The aims of this systematic review and meta-analysis were to examine the overall prevalence of dropout from psychological treatments for problem gambling and gambling disorder and to examine how study, client, and treatment variables influenced dropout rates. Method: A systematic search was conducted to identify studies of cognitive and/or behavioral therapies and motivational interventions for problem gambling and gambling disorder. Meta-analysis was used to calculate an overall weighted dropout rate. Random effect meta-regressions were used to examine covariates of dropout rates. Mixed-effect subgroup analyses were used to examine moderators of dropout rates. Results: The systematic search identified 24 studies (31 dropout rates) comprising 2,791 participants. Using a random-effects model, the overall weighted dropout rate was 39.1%, 95% CI [33.0%, 45.6%]. Increases in the percentage of married participants were significantly associated with lower dropout rates. Dropout rates were significantly higher when dropout was defined as attending all sessions of a treatment protocol compared to when defined as attending a prespecified number of sessions different from the total in the protocol and when defined as study therapists judging participants to be dropouts. Insufficient reporting of some gambling-related variables and other psychological symptom variables prevented a thorough examination of covariates and moderators. Conclusions: A large proportion of individuals drop out of treatment for problem gambling and gambling disorder. Future research should examine the reasons for dropout across marital statuses and should adopt dropout definitions that consider session-by-session symptom change. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) This review suggests that a significant proportion of individuals drop out of psychological treatments for problem gambling and gambling disorder. This review also recommends that the field adopt symptom-based dropout definitions to determine the adequate dosage of psychological treatment for problem gambling and gambling disorder. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved

The Status of SBIRT Training in Health Professions Education: A Cross-Discipline Review and Evaluation of SBIRT Curricula and Educational Research.

Purpose: To assess the quality of curricular research on the Screening Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) approach and determine the presence of useful training modalities, particularly motivational interviewing (MI) training, across health care training curricula. Method: The authors conducted a systematic review of published, peer-reviewed studies in PubMed, ERIC, CINAHL, Ovid HealthSTAR, and PsycINFO databases through March 2021 for English-language studies describing SBIRT, a curriculum for health care trainees, and curricular intervention outcomes. After the records were independently assessed, data were extracted and 20% of the studies were double-coded for interrater reliability. Results: Of 1,856 studies, 95 were included in the review; 22 had overlapping samples and were consolidated into 10 nested studies, leaving 83 total. Interrater reliability ranged from moderate (κ = .74, P \u3c .001) to strong (κ = .91, P \u3c .001) agreement. SBIRT training was delivered to trainees across many professions, including nursing (n = 34, 41%), medical residency (n = 28, 34%), and social work (n = 24, 29%). Nearly every study described SBIRT training methods (n = 80, 96%), and most reported training in MI (n = 54, 65%). On average, studies reported 4.06 (SD = 1.64) different SBIRT training methods and 3.31 (SD = 1.59) MI training methods. Their mean design score was 1.92 (SD = 0.84) and mean measurement score was 1.89 (SD = 1.05). A minority of studies measured SBIRT/MI skill (n = 23, 28%), and 4 studies (5%) set a priori benchmarks for their curricula. Conclusions: SBIRT training has been delivered to a wide range of health care trainees and often includes MI. Rigor scores for the studies were generally low due to limited research designs and infrequent use of objective skill measurement. Future work should include predefined training benchmarks and validated skills measurement

Are the Effects of Cognitive-Behavioral Techniques for Gambling-Related Harms Overestimated? A Meta-Analysis

Comprehensive reviews have touted cognitive-behavioral (CB) techniques as the treatment elements with the most robust empirical support for treating gambling-related harms. However, these meta-analyses contain methodological weaknesses that limit understanding of how strongly CB techniques affect gambling disorder symptom severity and dimensions of gambling behavior. Specifically, prior meta-analyses have not thoroughly conducted publication bias analyses or examined the impact of heterogeneity in effect sizes estimates from individual studies on overall weighted effect sizes yielded from meta-analysis. Following best practice guidelines, we identified 29 studies representing 3,991 participants. CB techniques significantly reduced gambling disorder symptom severity (g = -1.14), gambling frequency (g = -0.54), and gambling intensity (g = -0.32) at posttreatment relative to control. However, publication bias analyses indicated that studies with low sample sizes skew these estimates of treatment effects; only a few studies with large sample sizes exist across the literature. Furthermore, high heterogeneity was concerning in that the effect sizes in future studies were estimated to range from large reductions to deterioration (g = -2.58 to g = 1.42). Clearly, large, carefully designed, and funded treatment outcome studies are necessary to confidently understand how best help individuals with gambling-related harms. CB techniques are a promising treatment for gambling-related harms, but the effects of techniques are probably overestimated. Furthermore, techniques may not be reliably efficacious for all individuals seeking treatment for gambling-related harms. More randomized controlled trials are needed to yield precise estimates of the effect of treatment

A market-based approach to recommender systems

Recommender systems have been widely advocated as a way of coping with the problem of information overload for knowledge workers. Given this, multiple recommendation methods have been developed. However, it has been shown that no one technique is best for all users in all situations. Thus we believe that effective recommender systems should incorporate a wide variety of such techniques and that some form of overarching framework should be put in place to coordinate the various recommendations so that only the best of them (from whatever source) are presented to the user. To this end, we show that a marketplace, in which the various recommendation methods compete to over their recommendations to the user, can be used in this role. Specifically, this paper presents the principled design of such a marketplace (including the auction protocol, the reward mechanism and the bidding strategies of the individual recommendation agents) and evaluates the market's capability to effectively coordinate multiple methods. Through analysis and simulation, we show that our market is capable of shortlisting recommendations in decreasing order of user perceived quality and of correlating the individual agent's internal quality rating to the user's perceived quality

Liver regulatory mechanisms of noncoding variants at lipid and metabolic trait loci

Summary: Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have identified hundreds of risk loci for liver disease and lipid-related metabolic traits, although identifying their target genes and molecular mechanisms remains challenging. We predicted target genes at GWAS signals by integrating them with molecular quantitative trait loci for liver gene expression (eQTL) and liver chromatin accessibility QTL (caQTL). We predicted specific regulatory caQTL variants at four GWAS signals located near EFHD1, LITAF, ZNF329, and GPR180. Using transcriptional reporter assays, we determined that caQTL variants rs13395911, rs11644920, rs34003091, and rs9556404 exhibit allelic differences in regulatory activity. We also performed a protein binding assay for rs13395911 and found that FOXA2 differentially interacts with the alleles of rs13395911. For variants rs13395911 and rs11644920 in putative enhancer regulatory elements, we used CRISPRi to demonstrate that repression of the enhancers altered the expression of the predicted target and/or nearby genes. Repression of the element at rs13395911 reduced the expression of EFHD1, and repression of the element at rs11644920 reduced the expression of LITAF, SNN, and TXNDC11. Finally, we showed that EFHD1 is a metabolically active gene in HepG2 cells. Together, these results provide key steps to connect genetic variants with cellular mechanisms and help elucidate the causes of liver disease