In an effort to identify effective instructional practices for teaching writing to elementary grade students, we conducted a meta-analysis of the writing intervention literature, focusing our efforts on true and quasi-experiments. We located 115 documents that included the statistics for computing an effect size (ES). We calculated an average…

The study examined the impact of computer technology on written business communication. Experimental groups (using microcomputers) and control groups (using typewriters) produced four written assignments. Findings indicate that computer use has a positive effect on attitudes about assignments but no effect on time efficiency or product quality.…

The author investigated the role of phonological neighborhood on visual word recognition. Using a lexical decision task, the author showed in Experiment 1 that words with large phonological neighborhoods were processed more rapidly than those with smaller phonological neighborhoods. This facilitative effect was obtained even when the nonword…

There is considerable concern that the majority of adolescents do not develop the competence in writing they need to be successful in school, the workplace, or their personal lives. A common explanation for why youngsters do not write well is that schools do not do a good job of teaching this complex skill. In an effort to identify effective…

Eighty-three Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) writing prompts administered via computer-based testing between July 1998 and August 2000 were examined for differences attributable to the response mode (handwriting or word processing) chosen by examinees. Differences were examined statistically using polytomous logistic regression. A…

Eighty-three Test of English as a Foreign Language™ (TOEFL®) CBT writing prompts that were administered between July 1998 and August 2000 were examined in order to identify differences in scores that could be attributed to the response mode chosen by examinees (handwritten or word processed). Differences were examined statistically using…

In response to critics' charges that use of the word processor may have a detrimental effect on writing, this study identified and analyzed 20 published studies that used experimental and control groups to compare conventional writing instruction (using handwriting) with instruction using the word processor. Five types of outcomes were analyzed:…

In an effort to provide information about the effect of computer use in schools on student achievement, attitudes, dropout rate, and learning time, a review of instructional computing research analyzed studies done between 1980 and 1987 using statistical summary procedures. Reviewers used a meta analysis procedure to calculate effect size as they…

This metanalysis reviews 32 studies that compared 2 groups of students receiving identical writing instruction, with only 1 group using word processing for writing assignments. Word processing improved the quality of student writing but did not improve student attitudes. Suggestions are given for using word processing more effectively. (SLD)