This article is part of a special LDRP research-to-practice series introducing key concepts to enable special education practitioners and other nonresearchers to be more informed research consumers. In the article, we explore how social validity is assessed in special education research and how to interpret social validity assessments. Rather than…

Preregistration involves researchers publicly registering key study elements before conducting a study to increase the transparency of research and limit the use and impact of questionable research practices. To support special education researchers' engagement with preregistrations, in this article we provide an overview of preregistration and…

Open-science reforms, which aim to increase credibility and access of research, have the potential to benefit the research base in special education, as well as practice and policy informed by that research base. Awareness of open science is increasing among special education researchers. However, relatively few researchers in the field have…

Openness is a foundational principle in science. Making the tools and products of scientific research openly accessible advances core aims and values of education researchers, such as the credibility, equity, impact, and efficiency of research. The digital revolution has expanded opportunities for providing greater access to research. In this…

Mixed-methods research can uniquely inform special education practice by combining qualitative and quantitative research approaches. However, its distinct features can also make mixed-methods research difficult to understand and apply. In this article, we provide an introduction to mixed-methods research purposes, designs, and quality…

Qualitative research methods are used within special education research to provide insights about how and why phenomena occur. They can, however, be misunderstood and applied inappropriately. Our aim in this article is to provide an overview of qualitative methods, including their purpose, contributions to research involving students with learning…

Concerns about the conduct of research are pervasive in many fields, including education. In this preregistered study, we replicated and extended previous studies from other fields by asking education researchers about 10 questionable research practices and five open research practices. We asked them to estimate the prevalence of the practices in…

Scientific research provides a reliable means for developing and accumulating knowledge bases to guide policy and practice. However, evidence from meta-research and large-scale replication projects suggests that the published research base likely reflects bias, which threatens the validity and credibility of research-based recommendations.…

Single-case research methods provide the basis for evaluating effective instructional approaches in special education. The purpose of this article is to provide special educators an overview of single-case research methods, with an emphasis on how these designs are used to establish whether an instructional practice relates to improved learner…

Scientific evidence should guide the selection of practice for individuals with disabilities. Scientific evidence, however, must be trustworthy to move special education toward greater empirical certainty and more effective policies and practices. Transparency, openness, and reproducibility increase the trustworthiness of evidence. We propose that…

The aim of this article is to provide practitioners and other nonresearchers a basic understanding of research designs to aid in appropriately interpreting and applying research findings in special education. Research design provides the blueprint for conducting a research study and shapes what kind of knowledge is generated by the study. We…

The primary purpose of this book is to offer a broad-based examination into the role of scientific inquiry in contemporary special education. As with the first two editions, which were published in 2001 and 2011, the goal is to provide a comprehensive overview of the philosophical, ethical, methodological, and analytical fundamentals of social…

Researchers sometimes conduct a study and find that the predicted relation between variables did not exist or that the intervention did not have a positive impact on student outcomes; these are referred to as null findings because they fail to disconfirm the null hypothesis. Rather than consider such studies as failures and disregard the null…

Special educators are urged to use research findings to inform their instruction in order to improve student outcomes. However, it can be difficult to tell whether and how research findings apply to one's own students. In this article, we discuss how special educators can consider the samples and the sampling methods in studies to examine the…

Evidence-based reforms that emphasize the identification and implementation of empirically validated practices are at the forefront of educational research, and recently, the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC; 2014) published a set of standards for establishing evidence-based practices in special education. Although 30 years of research…