When classifying the evidence base of practices, special education scholars typically appraise study quality to identify and exclude from consideration in their reviews unacceptable-quality studies that are likely biased and might bias review findings if included. However, study quality appraisals used in the process of identifying evidence-based…

The basic assumptions underlying the development of early identification procedures for at-risk children are reviewed. The effectiveness of screening measures designed to identify educationally "at-risk" children is critically examined. It is concluded that there is a general lack of evidence for the usefulness of such instruments. (Author)

Focusing primarily on learning disabled children, the article briefly reviews the literature related to perceptual skills required in reading acquisition and the validity of current perceptual measures to tap these task-related perceptual abilities, and proposes an informal task-related measure to overcome the drawbacks of more formal measures of…

The practice of evaluating certain special education tests in terms of traditional test evaluation procedures appears inconsistent with observations that these tests are often so closely tied to instructional procedures that they are not separable in practice. (Author)

The article reviews validity and reliability studies on the informal reading inventory, a diagnostic instrument to identify reading grade-level placement and strengths and weaknesses in work recognition and comprehension. Gives suggestions to improve the validity and reliability of existing inventories and to evaluate them in newly published…

Two methodological problems often arising in dyslexia research are considered. The first problem concerns the validity of experimental measures and the related problem of interpreting null results. The second problem involves the effects of sampling from a disabled population if the disorder under investigation has multiple unknown origins.…

This article, which introduces six papers on the validity of distinguishing subgroups of children with language and learning disabilities based on discrepancies between academic attainment and intelligence test scores, comments on the papers' diversity in samples, measurement characteristics, and statistical approaches and outlines the studies'…