Intervention research and research methods

Question 1

What is the purpose of an intervention?

Answer 1

Finding ways of helping children with dyslexia in realistic ways, and helping to clarify the underlying cause.

Question 2

What should interventions be based on? (citation)

Answer 2

Theory of how a skill develops and is promoted, and evidence (Snowling & Hulme, 2011)

Question 3

What do interventions based on phonological awareness training do? (citations)

Answer 3

Improve reading in normal children, equal/better improvement for children with dyslexia, these improvements are greater when accompanied by letter knowledge training. (National reading panel, 2000; Bus & van Ijzendoorn, 1999)

Question 4

What do interventions based on phonics instruction (alphabetic focus) do? (citations)

Answer 4

Similar improvements to PA training, similar effects for dyslexic and not children (NRP, 2000; Torgerson, Brooks & Hall, 2006)

Question 5

Torgerson ((2005)

Answer 5

Intervention effects are the same when PA training and phonics instruction are used together as apart.

Question 6

What are the 2 approaches to reading interventions?

Answer 6

Whole word approaches: focus on learning orthographic form

Phonics approaches: teaching the letter-sound correspondence rules that govern spelling.

Question 7

What are the 2 approaches to phonics teaching?

Answer 7

Synthetic phonics: from small to large- constructing and creating words
Analytic phonics: Exploring spelling patterns in whole words

Question 8

Which of the 2 approaches is most used in reading interventions?

Answer 8

An integration of more than one because skilled reading requires both abilities. e.g. Academy of Reading and ABRACADABRA

Question 9

Brooks (2016)

Answer 9

review of interventions

Question 10

Reid-Lyon and Moats (1997)

Answer 10

Interventions can call themselves phonics based but lack linguistic sophistication to tackle phonological development e.g.: organisation of classes, calibration of difficulty, appropriate feedback, choice of reading material for practice and balance of written and spoken content.

Question 11

What are some ethical intervention design consideration?

Answer 11

Do all students get the potentially effective intervention? When should the control treatment be stopped and treatment be applied?

Question 12

What are some practical considerations for intervention research design?

Answer 12

The classroom uptake is better if teacher-led (need training); the duration of the intervention (short and long term efficacy); control over the intervention; double blind; carry over from other interventions; teacher experience effects.

Question 13

Bradley & Bryant (1983)

Answer 13

A causal connection between sound categorisation, reading and spelling.
Study 1: longitudinal evidence that early sound categorisation ability predicts later reading and spelling.
Study 2: Intervention with 65 children in 4 groups of interventions: categorising sound, categorising sound + alphabet teaching, categorising concepts and no training.
Significant effect on reading ability (and not on maths) compared to no training of categorising sound and categorising sound and alphabet training, training for both was sig better than categorising concepts training but just sound training was not.

Question 14

Hatcher, Hulms et al (2006)

Answer 14

77 children (mean age 5.6) with weak reading randomly allocated to control, 20 and 10 week intervention groups. The intervention involved 25x20min individual sessions and 25x20min small group sessions on alternate days.
Participants read graded texts, and did letter-sound and phoneme identification.
Letter knowledge plateaued after 10 weeks; 10 weeks of intervention improved reading & PA compared to no intervention, 20 weeks made little progress in reading or PA after 10 weeks, gains were maintained 11 months later.
Double blind experiment with an educationally realistic RCT design.

Question 15

Shapiro and Solity (2008)

Answer 15

Early reading research intervention:
Experimental schools- replaced content and organisation of reading curriculum with Early Reading Research Intervention (ERR) : PA, phonics, sight word vocab and reading.
Assess (a)- Reception intervention- assess (b)- Y1 intervention- assess (c)- Y2 intervention- assess (d).
a) control vs ERR similar in reading, rhyme and letter sound and maths
b&c) ERR sig increase in read score and growth faster than control. Early reading predicted later reading, ERR predicted later reading even after effect of early reading skill removed.
d) ERR no longer predicted reading but gains were maintained. Children at all levels benefited from ERR.
Controls: Effects of school (lots of schools), pre test equivilence of samples, post tests including removal of intervention to confirm cause of changes, checked intervention was effective for good and poor reader.

Question 16

Torgerson & Torgerson (2008)

Answer 16

Suggest ideal research study, RCT is gold standard.
Register trial protocol- identify & recruit schools- identify & recruit children - pre-test - randomisation to groups - intervention- test under exam conditions - blind marking - analyse & report via consort criteria.

Question 17

Duff and Clarke (2010)

Answer 17

How interventions should be implemented and measured.
Recruitment, design and & controls, intervention validity and fidelity, appropriate and timely measures, unbiased conclusions

Question 18

McArthur et al. (2012)

Answer 18

Reported failures of existing studies: how groups are allocated should be: participants blind to control/experimental group allocation, teachers and researchers measuring reading progress blind to group allocation

Question 19

NIH report criteria

Answer 19

focused instructional research, participants and intervention described, duration of effects, justifiable methods, outcome measures apparent.

Question 20

PA meta analysis criteria

Answer 20

Experimental/quasi experimental/multiple baseline method, refereed journal, hypothesis PA vs other/none, unconfounded training,, statistics

Question 21

NIH PA meta analysis

Answer 21

52 studies
PA instruction was sig better at helping children aquire PA and apply to reading and spelling than alternatives with effect lasting months.
Moderators of effect were degree of focus on PA, PA+ letters, small groups, 5+hours.
SES= no effect
outcomes were better for at risk beginning readers & TD readers than for older disabled readers.

Question 22

Ehri, Nunes, Stahl & Willows (2001)

Answer 22

Long term effects
Follow-up periods vary but commonly one year post intervention
Phonics instruction remains moderately effective 1 year post instruction

Question 23

Torgeson 2004; Hatcher et al (2006)

Answer 23

Effect of intensive intervention may reduce over time

Question 24

Tergeson (2005a)

Answer 24

Degree of impairment:
Growth rates (score gain per hour of instruction & final status (centile rank) differ for children beginning interventions at different levels of reading ability. Which indicator of improvement should be used?

Question 25

Fast ForWard intervention

Answer 25

Computer base oral language & literacy development - esimated 570,000 children used it.
Theory based on had small samples, no control groups and non-randomised (Tallal et al., 1996); Merzenich et al., 1996). Unclear how intervention promoted skill.
Published in scientific learning corp. papers- not peer reviewed.
Strong et al. (2011) meta-analysis revealed no evidence for intervention working.

Question 26

Academy of Reading

Answer 26

Computer based skill training focusing on fluency from numerous aspects.
Based on PA training helping brain using, and reading developed through improving decoding, GPC, fluency and comprehension.
Promotes skill through mastery of earlier skills before later ones, self-esteem raise and feedback.
Research papers by EPS has small samples, not RCTs no stats or outcome measures given.

Question 27

What things should be considered for effective delivery of an intervention in education?

Answer 27

Support and clarity of purpose, validity of delivery, learning by teacher and enabling context. Also costs of implementation as training of teachers is required.
Denton, Vaughn & Fletcher (2003). There must be effective links between research and practice, information about how to implement research, belief in research based evidence, useability in practice, accessibility of research, curriculum and policy which allows implementation of evidence based interventions.