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

Notes to Table A.1:
One general note needs to be given first: the term ‘reliable’ is used throughout this Appendix
in its everyday and not in its technical sense.
1) Type of children: categorised as one of
SEN - having special educational needs
Low (reading and/or spelling or writing) attainment, which will in many cases
include children with SEN
Mixed ability - though this still means that the group studied was underachieving,
on average, by national standards.
2) Equivalence of groups: Eight of the studies (The Catch Up Project (pilot and national),
Inference Training, MTSR, Parental Involvement, Reading Intervention (original),
Reading Recovery, Somerset (all four phases), RITA) had alternative intervention
groups. These were all properly constituted, in the sense that they were created by
assigning pupils to groups randomly or by matching, and their results are treated as fully
reliable in this analysis.
Eighteen studies had no-intervention control groups: BRP in Bradford and
Worcestershire, The Catch Up Project (pilot and national studies), Family Literacy in
Hampshire, Individual Spelling, Cued Spelling (both studies), IA&T, Paired Reading,
Parental Involvement, PAT, Reading Intervention (original, and for statemented
children), Reading Recovery in London and Surrey, Somerset (1, 4), SPELLIT, Time for
Reading, AcceleRead AcceleWrite in Jersey, ILS, RITA, Paired Writing (all 3 studies).
However, in a few cases (AcceleRead AcceleWrite in Jersey, BRP in Bradford, Cued
Spelling (1)) it is clear that the control group had been chosen in a way which did not
make it properly equivalent to the experimental group (it seemed usually to consist of
children who happened to be available). Also, the control group in Family Literacy in
Hampshire was so small that its data are ignored. Data from the rest of these control
groups are logged below, and where a ratio gain can be calculated it is taken as reliable,
since RGs are always calculated independently for each group, and hence can in a sense
be seen as absolute statistics. However, results from these control groups are not relied
upon for comparisons with the experimental groups in the same studies.
In all but one of the remaining control-group studies, the control groups were set up in
ways which did make their results reliable as comparisons for the experimental groups.
The exception is ILS. From the report of that study it is clear that there were control
groups, but the details of their selection, and even the number of children involved, are
unclear. Nevertheless, given the provenance of the study, it is assumed for the purposes
of this analysis that the control groups were properly constituted, and comparative
statistics from them are used where possible.
3) Choice of tests to report: Almost all these studies used more than one instrument to
measure impact, and most used several. Only reading and spelling test and writing
assessment results have been analysed here, on the grounds that the main focus of this
enquiry is interventions designed to boost literacy attainment. Some reading tests yield
more than one score (for example, the Neale Analysis gives scores for reading accuracy
and reading comprehension); where this is so, both sets of data have been given. All
other reading tests cited have been classified as giving measures of reading accuracy.
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