Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate secondary voice outcomes and detraining effects of 2 head and neck strengthening exercises, which have been used in swallowing rehabilitation, that is, the head-lift exercise (HLE) and the recline exercise (RE), in healthy older adults. Method: Twenty-seven healthy older adults (between 60 and 85…

In this essay, I suggest that a slightly modified version of Freedman's formulation of the clinical equipoise requirement is justified. I begin this essay with a brief discussion of the equipoise requirement. In the second and third sections, I discuss several objections to the clinical equipoise requirement as well as two attempts to justify the…

Randomized controlled trials in education are necessary to keep pace with the evidence-based practices demanded by schools and the nation. In this study, kindergarten students in a school district in Indiana were randomized on the class level: The experimental condition consisted of students utilizing a computer-adaptive reading program for 15…

Cluster Randomized Trial (CRT) designs are inherently multilevel and reflect the hierarchical structure of schools and the wider education system. To capture this multilevel nature, CRTs are commonly analysed using multilevel (or hierarchical) linear models. It is fairly common for CRT designs and analyses to include school and individual/pupil…

The purpose of this paper is to present results of recent advances in power analyses to detect the moderator effects in Cluster Randomized Trials (CRTs). This paper focus on demonstration of the software PowerUp!-Moderator. This paper provides a resource for researchers seeking to design CRTs with adequate power to detect the moderator effects of…

Purpose: This research note reports on an unexpected negative finding related to behavior change in a controlled trial designed to test whether partner training improves the conversational skills of volunteers. Method: The clinical trial involving training in "Supported Conversation for Adults with Aphasia" utilized a single-blind,…

Some advances in bioethics regarding ethical considerations that arise in the context of medical research can also be relevant when thinking about the ethical considerations that arise in the context of SoTL research. In this article, I aim to bring awareness to two potential ethical challenges SoTL researchers might face when playing a dual role…

Evaluators of education interventions increasingly need to design studies to detect impacts much smaller than the 0.20 standard deviations that Cohen (1988) characterized as "small." For example, an evaluation of Response to Intervention from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) detected impacts ranging from 0.13 to 0.17 standard…

Given the widespread use of non-experimental (NE) methods for assessing program impacts, there is a strong need to know whether NE approaches yield causally valid results in field settings. In within-study comparison (WSC) designs, the researcher compares treatment effects from an NE with those obtained from a randomized experiment that shares the…

The scientific rigor of education research has improved dramatically since the year 2000. Much of the credit for this improvement is deserved by Institute of Education Sciences (IES) policies that helped create a demand for rigorous research; increased human capital capacity to carry out such work; provided funding for the work itself; and…

Teacher professional development (TPD) programs are increasingly using video recordings of teaching practice to develop teacher capacity and foster student learning. However, consensus has yet to be reached about how to utilize video recordings in TPD for physical education (PE) teachers. We used semi-structured interviews and evaluations of PE…

Background/Context: When a researcher tests an educational program, product, or policy in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) and detects a significant effect on an outcome, the intervention is usually classified as something that "works." When the expected effects are not found, however, there is seldom an orderly and transparent…

This paper presents evidence confirming the validity of the RD design in the Reading Recovery study by examining the ability of the RD design to replicate the 1st grade results observed in the original i3 RCT focused on short-term impacts. Over 1,800 schools participated in the RD study over all four cohort years. The RD design used cutoff-based…

More aggregate data on school performance is available than ever before, opening up new possibilities for applied researchers interested in assessing the effectiveness of school-level interventions quickly and at a relatively low cost by implementing comparative interrupted times series (CITS) designs. We examine the extent to which effect…

Conventionally, regression discontinuity analysis contrasts a univariate regression's limits as its independent variable, "R," approaches a cut point, "c," from either side. Alternative methods target the average treatment effect in a small region around "c," at the cost of an assumption that treatment assignment,…