What Works for Children with Literacy Difficulties? - Digital ...

25 Family Literacy
Main references: Brooks et al. (1996a, 1997); Gorman and Brooks (1996)
Date: Summer 1994-Summer 1995 (1 cohort of children in each term)
Age-range: pre-school to Y2 (ages 3-6)
Type of children: Low attainment, or at risk of it
N of experimental group: 362 at outset, on about 20 sites. Smaller numbers at post-test and
at each of three follow-ups (see below) because calculations based only on children with
complete data (‘returners’)
N of control group: (no control group)
N of alternative intervention group: (no alternative intervention group)
Length of intervention in weeks: 12
Writing assessment: on 7-point scale derived empirically from analysis of about 900 of the
scripts, (see Gorman and Brooks, 1996a), later extended to 12-point scale (see Brooks et al.,
1997)
Sample sizes, average raw scores and s.d’s at pre- and post-test and 12-week, 9-month
and long-term follow-ups, and gains from pre-test:
N average score (s.d.) Gain
pre-test vs 279 3.5 (1.6)
post-test 4.1 (1.7) 0.6
pre-test vs 179 3.7 (1.6)
12 week 4.6 (1.4) 0.9
follow-up
pre-test vs 91 4.0 (1.5)
9 month 5.4 (1.3) 1.4
follow-up
pre-test vs 175 3.4 (1.6)
long-term 8.0 (1.7) 4.6
follow-up
Ratio gain: n/a
Effect size: not stated and could not be calculated
Statistical significances: p