Appropriately Targeting Group Interventions for Academic Sucess Adopting the Clinical Model and PAR Profiles

Abstract

Prevalence of academic risk (PAR) group profiles provide data enabling empirically based group-specialized prescriptions for targeted academic success interventions to increase student retention, completion, and graduation rates, while improving allocation of institutional resources. Postsecondary student attrition engenders student debt, shortages of highly trained professionals, and inadequate workforce diversity. Diagnostic PAR profiles, employing a proactive Diagnosis ? Prescription ? Intervention ? Evaluation Model adapted from clinical medicine, enable empirically targeted, group-specialized, student-success interventions. Two-step cluster analysis of survey responses from 512 students entering first-semester urban health science community college differentiated three PAR-profile groups: (a) traditional, (b) language/education/financially challenged, and (c) older/supporting families/financially challenged. The latter two groups’ end-of-first-semester odds of adverse academic status events were, respectively, 1.73 (p = .016) and 2.08 (p = .002) times the traditional group’s. PAR profiles enable empirically based group-tailored interventions for increasing student retention, completion, and graduation rates, while improving allocation of institutional resources.