The purpose of this investigation was to explore whether a difference existed between the effectiveness of paper-based format and tablet computer-based format Social Story interventions on frequency of undesired behaviors. An adapted alternating treatment design was implemented with four children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Data regarding…

In 2009, the government's Department for Education commissioned a team of researchers at NatCen Social Research to evaluate the effectiveness of the youth development/teenage pregnancy prevention programme 'Teens and Toddlers'. Previous studies had positive findings but had not been very rigorous in terms of methodology and methods used. We…

This study reports on Residency I, the first semester of a yearlong residency that utilizes problem-based learning scenarios, combined with field work, that covers both content and context and is meant to positively impact teacher candidates' self-efficacy as well as their actual efficacy as measured by scores on the edTPA. This quantitative…

Purpose: The purpose of this supplement article is to provide a resource of pertinent information concerning implementation science for immediate research application in communication sciences and disorders. Method: Key terminology related to implementation science is reviewed. Practical suggestions for the application of implementation science…

Background: Confounding caused by selection bias is often a key difference between non-randomized studies (NRS) and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of interventions. Key methodological issues: In this third paper of the series, we consider issues relating to the inclusion of NRS in systematic reviews on the effects of interventions. We discuss…

To answer "what works?" questions about policy interventions based on an experimental design, Peck (2003) proposes to use baseline characteristics to symmetrically divide treatment and control group members into subgroups defined by endogenously determined postrandom assignment events. Symmetric prediction of these subgroups in both…

This paper focuses on commonalities and differences of three approaches to large-scale professional development (PD) in mathematics education, based on two studies from Germany and one from the United States of America. All three initiatives break new ground in improving PD targeted at educating "multipliers", and in all three cases…

Experimental and quasi-experimental designs are used in educational research to establish causality and develop effective practices. These research designs rely on a counterfactual model that, in simple form, calls for a comparison between a treatment group and a control group. Developers of educational practices often assume that the population…

The Institute of Education Sciences has funded more than 100 experiments to evaluate educational interventions in an effort to generate scientific evidence of program effectiveness on which to base education policy and practice. In general, these studies are designed with the goal of having adequate statistical power to detect the average…

Regression discontinuity (RD), an "as good as randomized," research design is increasingly prominent in education research in recent years; the design gets eligible quasi-experimental designs as close as possible to experimental designs by using a stated threshold on a continuous baseline variable to assign individuals to a…

Upward Bound (UB) was one of the original federal "Great Society" programs of the 1960s and remains, fifty years later, the single largest college access program in the country. Recently, Congress has reduced funding and considered eliminating the program because of federal budget pressures and because the first analysis of the only…

Researchers who are interested in asking a number of questions about a particular phenomenon are increasingly looking to mixed methods as a useful research approach. In this case study, we discuss how mixed-methods research is situated in current debates about quantitative and qualitative methods. Then, we provide some reasons as to why we, and…

We review the effectiveness of first-year seminars based on the widely used criteria of first-year grades and the 1-year retention rate. Meta-analytic results indicate that first-year seminars have a small average effect on both first-year grades (k = 89, N = 52,406, d = 0.02) and the 1-year retention rate (k = 195, N = 169,666, d = 0.11). We…

Optimal levels of treatment fidelity, a critical moderator of intervention effectiveness, are often difficult to sustain in applied settings. It is unknown whether performance feedback, a widely researched method for increasing educators' treatment fidelity, is an evidence-based practice. The purpose of this review was to evaluate the current…

Successful school reform is dependent on the quality of decisions made by educational leaders. In such decision making, educational leaders are charged with using sound research findings as the basis for choosing school reform initiatives. As part of the debate regarding the usability of various evaluative research designs in providing information…