This article describes our efforts to screen and enrol clinical trial participants conscientiously in the COVID-19 pandemic setting. We present the standard screening and enrolment process prior to, and our process of adapting to, the pandemic. Our goal was to develop a way to screen and enrol people for clinical trials that was both equitable and…

The randomized control trial (RCT) is the primary experimental design in education research due to its strong internal validity for causal inference. However, in situations where RCTs are not feasible or ethical, quasi-experiments are alternatives to establish causal inference. This paper serves as an introduction to several quasi-experimental…

Stem cell therapy, a cutting-edge technology, aims to replace damaged cells with healthy ones. Stem cells possess the remarkable ability to multiply and differentiate into various cell types, making them ideal candidates for regenerative medicine. This therapy holds promise for treating a wide range of conditions and injuries. In this review, I…

Play in early childhood environments is critical to the social development of all children, including those with disabilities. Children with autism often experience delays in the development of play skills and may especially struggle with social play with peers. Thus, strategies to support social play in inclusive preschool settings are needed.…

Group design research studies can provide evidence to draw conclusions about "what works," "for whom," and "under what conditions" in special education. The quality indicators introduced by Gersten and colleagues (2005) have contributed to increased rigor in group design research, which has provided substantial…

Randomization of large number of participants to different treatment groups is often not a feasible or preferable way to answer questions of immediate interest to professional practice. Single case designs (SCDs) are a class of research designs that are experimental in nature but require only a few participants, all of whom receive the…

A common motivation for adding control variables to statistical models is to reduce the potential for spurious findings when analyzing non-experimental data and to thereby allow for more reliable causal inferences. However, as I show here, unless "all" potential confounding factors are included in an analysis (which is unlikely to be…

In school settings, nurses lead efforts to improve the student health and well-being to support academic success. Nurses are guided by evidenced-based practice and data to inform care decisions. The randomized controlled trial (RCT) is considered the gold standard of scientific rigor for clinical trials. RCTs are critical to the development of…

Demonstration of experimental control is considered a hallmark of high-quality single-case research design (SCRD). Studies that fail to demonstrate experimental control may not be published because researchers are unwilling to submit these papers for publication and journals are unlikely to publish negative results (i.e., the file drawer effect).…

Rigorous scholarship is essential to the continued growth of group work, yet the unique nature of this counseling specialty poses challenges for quantitative researchers. The purpose of this proposal is to overview unique challenges to quantitative research with groups in the counseling field, including difficulty in obtaining large sample sizes…

Much of the evidential basis for recent policy decisions is grounded in effect size: the standardised mean difference in outcome scores between a study's intervention and comparison groups. This is interpreted as measuring educational influence, importance or effectiveness of the intervention. This article shows this is a category error at two…

Shared book reading is defined as the interactive process of engaging children with text and illustrations. Through shared book reading, children learn to enjoy the reading process and appreciate different genres of literature, such as story books, alphabet books, and rhyming books. They acquire foundational skills that lead to reading success,…

Discipline-based education researchers have a natural laboratory--classrooms, programs, colleges, and universities. Studies that administer treatments to multiple sections, in multiple years, or at multiple institutions are particularly compelling for two reasons: first, the sample sizes increase, and second, the implementation of the treatments…

The articles in this special issue discuss efforts to improve academic reading outcomes for students and ways to achieve high implementation fidelity of promising strategies. At times the authors discuss if--and how--strong fidelity is associated with strong outcomes and potentially even impacts (the difference between program and control group…

Whether discussing the process involved in positive youth development (PYD), articulating an approach (or philosophy) of youth programs associated with PYD, or enacting a program aimed at promoting PYD, ideas derived from relational developmental systems (RDS) metatheory are pertinent. Accordingly, we discuss the RDS metamodel and explain the…