Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

consciousness-based education and governmentjects learned the Transcendental Meditation program and the otherhalf served as controls (Hawkins et al., 2003). The subjects were predominantlyof African American descent with an average age of 28. Aset of 21 cognitive and psychosocial variables were reduced by principalcomponents analysis into six composite factors. Despite high involuntaryattrition and low compliance, significant changes among the grouplearning the Transcendental Meditation program included reduction ofcognitive distortion and improvement on intelligence-related measures,as well as a trend towards significance on the factor of psychologicalwell-being.Follow-Up Study of Recidivism among California PrisonInmatesThis recidivism study by Rainforth et al. (2003) examined re-offendingrates for up to 15 years after release among the group of 153 prisonersat Folsom Prison who had learned the Transcendental Meditationprogram from 1975 to 1982, prior to release. Each subject who hadlearned the Transcendental Meditation program had a non-meditatingcontrol subject matched closely on the basis of parole year, rate, andoffense, as well as on prior commitment record, age, and history ofdrug abuse. The group of Transcendental Meditation subjects had arecidivism rate of 46.7 percent in contrast to 66.7 percent among controlsubjects, where recidivism was defined as re-arrest leading to felonyconviction. Survival analysis statistical models controlled for 22 demographicand criminal background variables. Survival analysis usinga Cox regression model found a statistically significant reduction ofrecidivism rate by 43.5% among the group of Transcendental Meditationparticipants. The most appropriate statistical model was found tobe a split-population Weibull model, which, unlike the usual survivalanalysis, takes into account that a subgroup of the population will notrecidivate; this analysis also showed a highly significant reduction inrecidivism among inmates who had learned the Transcendental Meditationprogram while incarcerated. A number of additional analyseswere also reported, which each supported the conclusion of significantreduction of recidivism.Table 1 lists the specific statistical results of each of the findingsviewed above. The effect size estimates from each study indicate that280