Patterns of Student Attendance for Group Counseling and the Influence of Student, Group, and Clinician Factors

Objective: An important implementation dimension to examine is the uptake of an EBP for those who are exposed to the intervention. Although an EBP may be delivered, the extent to which the targeted audience uptakes program elements is an essential requirement for achieving engagement, an important implementation dimension. Research suggests that engagement is influenced by client, interventionist, and intervention characteristics. This study examines youth attendance patterns at 25 sessions delivered through an indicated preventive intervention called Coping Power. Specifically, we examined potential factors which predicted students’ patterns of attendance at the intervention sessions across the school year, with the overarching goal of informing future implementation and uptake of the program.

Method: Data come from 20 intervention middle schools that are part of a RCT testing the efficacy of an adapted version of Coping Power for middle schoolers; the program is delivered by a clinician in a small group format (6-7 youth). Attendance data for the 125 students across the 25 student sessions were recorded by the implementing clinician.

Results: Preliminary analyses show that across the entire school year, students attended an average of 75.6% sessions (SD = 22.70). Overall, 32% of students consistently attended, with an attendance rate of 90% or better and only 16% of students attended less than 50% of the time. About 10% of students showed consistent attendance through the first half of the intervention, but then had a decline in attendance. Growth mixture modeling that accounts for the clustering within school and group will be used to determine whether there are patterns of attendance that emerge across the 25 sessions. We will then examine whether students of specific demographics (e.g., gender or race as well as degree of baseline risk), group characteristics (e.g., group size, ratio or count of males and females in the group), or clinician behaviors (e.g., engagement in individual sessions) are more or less likely to be in a specific growth class. We hypothesize that four attendance patterns may emerge (i.e., students who attend across the school year; do not attend consistently through the year; who begin attending and then decline; and those who take more time to start attending). Further, we hypothesize that the later emerging attendance may be in part facilitated by clinician-led individual sessions with the students.

Conclusion: The examination of uptake of the Coping Power intervention by students has important implications both for the examination of student outcomes as well as implementation research. Implications for optimizing student attendance in indicated programs like Coping Power, will be discussed.