Sample A: Cover Page of Thesis, Project, or Dissertation Proposal

purposes (i.e., first child who returned completed paperwork was listed first on his or her
classroom roster, etc.).
Pre- and Post-Intervention Data Collection
Literacy skills. The Test of Preschool Early Literacy (TOPEL; Lonigan, Wagner,
Torgesen, & Rashotte, 2006a) was used to assess children‘s baseline literacy skills. The
TOPEL is a new measure composed of three subtests assessing print knowledge,
definitional vocabulary, and phonological awareness, the three key emergent literacy
skills predicting children‘s reading and writing abilities from kindergarten through the
third grade (Lonigan, 2006), in children ages 3 to 5 years (Lonigan, Wagner, Torgesen, &
Rashotte, 2006b). Subtest scores reflect children‘s competence for each key aspect of
literacy, and a composite score for all three subtests reflects overall literacy. The TOPEL
is useful for measuring literacy skills for research purposes and for assessing
intervention-related changes in children‘s literacy skills (Lonigan et al., 2006b).
Because dialogic reading techniques have been shown to influence children‘s oral
language skills (Whitehurst et al., 1994, 1999), the Definitional Vocabulary subtest of the
TOPEL was administered. This subtest includes 35 items for which children identify
(e.g., answer the question ―What is this?‖) and describe important features of an object in
a picture (e.g., answer the question ―What does this do?‖), thus yielding assessments of
children‘s single-word oral vocabulary and definitional vocabulary (see Table 5), or a
single score reflecting definitional vocabulary competence. Testing begins with the first
item and continues until the final item is administered or a ceiling is reached (i.e., until
the child incorrectly answers both questions for three items in a row). Children receive a
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