Greg Roberts

An explanatory model of health promotion and quality of life in chronic disabling conditions.

BACKGROUND Although previous studies have examined selected factors influencing health-promoting behaviors or quality of life, the complex interplay of these variables in persons with chronic disabling conditions has not been investigated. OBJECTIVE To test an explanatory model of variables influencing health promotion and quality of life (Stuifbergen & Rogers, 1997) in persons living with the chronic disabling condition of multiple sclerosis (MS). METHODS A sample of 786 persons with MS (630 women and 156 men) completed a battery of instruments measuring severity of illness-related impairment, barriers to health-promoting behaviors, resources, self-efficacy, acceptance, health-promoting behaviors, and perceived quality of life. The proposed model was assessed and modified using the weighted least squares procedure (WLS), which is implemented by LISREL8 (Joreskog & Sorbom, 1993). RESULTS The initial model was modified to obtain a recursive model with adequate fit, chi2 (8, N = 786) = 77, p < 0.05; GFI = 0.96; IFI = 0.98; CFI = 0.98. The antecedent variables accounted for 58% of the variance in the frequency of health-promoting behaviors and 66% of the variance in perceived quality of life. The effects of severity of illness on quality of life were mediated partially by health-promoting behaviors, resources, barriers, self-efficacy and acceptance. CONCLUSIONS The final model supports the hypothesis that quality of life is the outcome of a complex interplay among contextual factors (severity of illness), antecedent variables (Stuifbergen & Rogers, 1997), and health-promoting behaviors. The strength of direct and indirect paths suggests that interventions to enhance social support, decrease barriers, and increase specific self-efficacy for health behaviors would result in improved health-promoting behaviors and quality of life. Further research using a longitudinal design is needed to clarify the effects of the interaction between health-promoting behaviors and trajectory of illness on quality of life for persons with chronic disabling conditions.

Efficacy of Collaborative Strategic Reading With Middle School Students

The authors conducted an experimental study to examine the effects of collaborative strategic reading and metacognitive strategic learning on the reading comprehension of students in seventh- and eighth-grade English/language arts classes in two sites (Texas, Colorado) and in three school districts. Students were randomly assigned to classes and then classes were randomly assigned to treatment or business-as-usual comparison groups. If a teacher had an uneven number of classes, we assigned extra classes to treatment. The total number of classes randomized was 61, with 34 treatment and 27 comparison. Treatment students received a multicomponent reading comprehension instruction (collaborative strategic reading) from their English/language arts/reading teachers that included teaching students to apply comprehension strategies in collaborative groups for 18 weeks, with approximately two sessions per week. Findings indicated significant differences in favor of the treatment students on the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Comprehension Test but not on reading fluency.

Extensive Reading Interventions for Students With Reading Difficulties After Grade 3

This synthesis extends a report of research on extensive interventions in kindergarten through third grade (Wanzek & Vaughn, 2007) to students in Grades 4 through 12, recognizing that many of the same questions about the effectiveness of reading interventions with younger students are important to address with older students, including (a) how effective are extensive interventions in improving reading outcomes for older students with reading difficulties or disabilities and (b) what features of extensive interventions (e.g., group size, duration, grade level) are associated with improved outcomes. Nineteen studies were synthesized. Ten studies met criteria for a meta-analysis, reporting on 22 distinct treatment/comparison differences. Mean effect sizes ranged from 0.10 to 0.16 for comprehension, word reading, word reading fluency, reading fluency, and spelling outcomes. No significant differences in student outcomes were noted among studies related to instructional group size, relative number of hours of intervention, or grade level of intervention.

A Meta-Analysis of Interventions for Struggling Readers in Grades 4–12 1980–2011

This meta-analysis synthesizes the literature on interventions for struggling readers in Grades 4 through 12 published between 1980 and 2011. It updates Scammacca et al.’s analysis of studies published between 1980 and 2004. The combined corpus of 82 study-wise effect sizes was meta-analyzed to determine (a) the overall effectiveness of reading interventions studied over the past 30 years, (b) how the magnitude of the effect varies based on student, intervention, and research design characteristics, and (c) what differences in effectiveness exist between more recent interventions and older ones. The analysis yielded a mean effect of 0.49, considerably smaller than the 0.95 mean effect reported in 2007. The mean effect for standardized measures was 0.21, also much smaller than the 0.42 mean effect reported in 2007. The mean effects for reading comprehension measures were similarly diminished. Results indicated that the mean effects for the 1980–2004 and 2005–2011 groups of studies were different to a statistically significant degree. The decline in effect sizes over time is attributed at least in part to increased use of standardized measures, more rigorous and complex research designs, differences in participant characteristics, and improvements in the school’s “business-as-usual” instruction that often serves as the comparison condition in intervention studies.

Early Numeracy Intervention Program for First-Grade Students with Mathematics Difficulties

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of an early numeracy preventative Tier 2 intervention on the mathematics performance of first-grade students with mathematics difficulties. Researchers used a pretest-posttest control group design with randomized assignment of 139 students to the Tier 2 treatment condition and 65 students to the comparison condition. Systematic instruction, visual representations of mathematical concepts, purposeful and meaningful practice opportunities, and frequent progress monitoring were used to develop understanding in early numeracy skills and concepts. Researchers used progress-monitoring measures and a standardized assessment measure to test the effects of the intervention. Findings showed that students in the treatment group outperformed students in the comparison group on the progress-monitoring measures of mathematics performance and the measures that focused on whole-number computation. There were no differences between groups on the problem-solving measures.

Effects of Intensive Reading Intervention for Eighth-Grade Students With Persistently Inadequate Response to Intervention

The authors report the effects of a yearlong, very small-group, intensive reading intervention for eighth-grade students with serious reading difficulties who had demonstrated low response to intervention (RTI) in both Grades 6 and 7. At the beginning of Grade 6, a cohort of students identified as having reading difficulties were randomized to treatment or comparison conditions. Treatment group students received researcher-provided reading intervention in Grade 6, which continued in Grade 7 for those with low response to intervention; comparison students received no researcher-provided intervention. Participants in the Grade 8 study were members of the original treatment (N = 28) and comparison (N = 13) conditions who had failed to pass a state-mandated reading comprehension test in both Grades 6 and 7. In Grade 8, treatment group students received a 50-minute, daily, individualized, intensive reading intervention in groups of two to four students per teacher. The results showed that students in the treatment condition demonstrated significantly higher scores than comparison students on standardized measures of comprehension (effect size = 1.20) and word identification (effect size = 0.49), although most continued to lack grade-level proficiency in reading despite 3 years of intervention. Findings from this study provide a rationale for intensive intervention for middle school students with severe reading difficulties.

Meta-Analysis With Complex Research Designs: Dealing With Dependence From Multiple Measures and Multiple Group Comparisons

Previous research has shown that treating dependent effect sizes as independent inflates the variance of the mean effect size and introduces bias by giving studies with more effect sizes more weight in the meta-analysis. This article summarizes the different approaches to handling dependence that have been advocated by methodologists, some of which are more feasible to implement with education research studies than others. A case study using effect sizes from a recent meta-analysis of reading interventions is presented to compare the results obtained from different approaches to dealing with dependence. Overall, mean effect sizes and variance estimates were found to be similar, but estimates of indexes of heterogeneity varied. Meta-analysts are advised to explore the effect of the method of handling dependence on the heterogeneity estimates before conducting moderator analyses and to choose the approach to dependence that is best suited to their research question and their data set.

Effects of Individualized and Standardized Interventions on Middle School Students with Reading Disabilities

This study reports the effectiveness of a year-long, small-group, tertiary (Tier 3) intervention that examined 2 empirically derived but conceptually different treatments and a comparison condition. The researchers had randomly assigned all students to treatment or comparison conditions. The participants were seventh- and eighth-grade students from the previous year who received an intervention and did not meet exit criteria. The researchers assigned them to one of two treatments: standardized (n = 69) or individualized (n = 71) for 50 min a day, in group sizes of 5, for the entire school year. Comparison students received no researcher-provided intervention (n = 42). The researchers used multigroup modeling with nested comparisons to evaluate the statistical significance of Time 3 estimates. Students in both treatments outperformed the comparison students on assessments of decoding, fluency, and comprehension. Intervention type did not moderate the pattern of effects, although students in the standardized treatment had a small advantage over individualized students on word attack. This study provides a framework from which to refine further interventions for older students with reading disabilities.

Secondary Interventions in Reading; Providing Additional Instruction for Students at Risk

principal who was previously a special education teacher. He comments about Responsiveness to Intervention (RTI), “I have heard a great deal about RTI as part of the newly reauthorized law for special education students. However, I am responsible for all of the learners in my school. How does RTI fit into the entire school context? What can I do, as the curriculum leader for my school, to implement the most effective interventions so that I know what responsiveness means in my school?”

Recruiting People With Disabilities as Research Participants: Challenges and Strategies to Address Them

As service professionals strive to become morefocused on the needs and aspirations of people withdisabilities, soliciting information directly from in-dividuals about their perceptions of their lives hasbecome increasingly important (Freedman, 2001;Rapley, 2003; Schalock, 1994; Sigelman, Budd,Spanhel, & Schoenrock, 1981; Sigelman et al.,1980). People with disabilities are taking a largerand more primary role in the planning, evaluation,and delivery of services. Consequently, the natureof research efforts has been evolving from one inwhich investigators treat people with disabilities assubjects to one that includes these ‘‘subjects’’ in thedesign and implementation of the research. Con-ducting such studies requires careful planning onthe part of researchers. In this paper we reflect onthe challenges of surveying people with disabilitiesand discuss possible strategies to address these chal-lenges.Our experience is based upon a face-to-face in-terview study of adults with disabilities conductedover a 2-year period in two cities within a largesouthwestern state. Project Asking Consumers toIndicate Their Own Needs and Strengths (AC-TIONS) was designed to enable researchers to gath-er information about the perceptions of people witha wide range of disabling conditions about their life.The state’s Council on Developmental Disabilities,which funded the study, planned to use this infor-mation in their planning process.Project ACTIONS’ advisory group decidedthat those individuals we recruited should have thecapacity to consent to participation, operationallydefined as individuals who did not have a legalguardian. The recruitment plan included surveyingindividuals with a range of disabling conditions, in-cluding physical/mobility impairments, whethercongenital or the result of trauma; developmentaldisabilities, including cognitive impairments (in themild to moderate range); and other disabling con-ditions. Both males and females were recruited intothis multi-ethnic sample.