Lexia Core5 Reading
Study: O'Callaghan et al. (2016)

Describe how students were selected to participate in the study:

Participants were selected from two town-based primary schools in Northern Ireland. These schools were chosen based on their ability to provide pupils with access to a multicomputer information and communications technology (or ICT) suite and their focus on raising whole-school literacy levels in their school development plan.

Describe how students were identified as being at risk for academic failure (AI) or as having emotional or behavioral difficulties (BI):

Children were screened to identify those with the weakest reading skills. Inclusion criteria were (1) being in a mainstream Year 1 or Year 2 class, and (2) having a standard score of 90 or less on any of the four subtests of the four Phonological Assessment Battery 2nd Edition (PhAB-2) subtests assessed (low average to below average range). Children with scores of 0 on all four subtests were excluded from the study and provided with an alternative, highly intensive intervention.

ACADEMIC INTERVENTION: What percentage of participants were at risk, as measured by one or more of the following criteria:

• below the 30th percentile on local or national norm, or
• identified disability related to the focus of the intervention?

%

BEHAVIORAL INTERVENTION: What percentage of participants were at risk, as measured by one or more of the following criteria:

• emotional disability label,
• placed in an alternative school/classroom,
• non-responsive to Tiers 1 and 2, or
• designation of severe problem behaviors on a validated scale or through observation?

%

Specify which condition is the submitted intervention:

Lexia Core5 Reading Intervention group

Specify which condition is the control condition:

Business-as-usual, wait-list control group

If you have a third, competing condition, in addition to your control and intervention condition, identify what the competing condition is (data from this competing condition will not be used):

Using the tables that follow, provide data demonstrating comparability of the program group and control group in terms of demographics.

Grade Level

Race–Ethnicity

Socioeconomic Status

Disability Status

ELL Status

Gender

What method was used to determine students' placement in treatment/control groups?

Random

Please describe the assignment method or the process for defining treatment/comparison groups.

Every child who met eligibility criteria agreed to participate in the study and were randomly assigned to either the Lexia Core5 Reading group or a wait-list control group.

What was the unit of assignment?

Students

If other, please specify:

Please describe the unit of assignment:

What unit(s) were used for primary data analysis?

Schools
Teachers
Students
Classes
Other
If other, please specify:

Please describe the unit(s) used for primary data analysis:

How was the program delivered?

Individually
Small Group
Classroom

What were the background, experience, training, and ongoing support of the instructors or interventionists?

The study was run in conjunction with the Educational Psychology Service and the School of Psychology and was overseen by a qualified Educational and Child Psychologist with research experience as lead investigator in school-based RCTs in the past.

Describe when and how fidelity of treatment information was obtained.

The Lexia program tracks the time an individual child spends on the program and tracks the number of units each child correctly completes, flagging areas of difficulty where a pupil fails to grasp a concept or make progress despite access to additional activities to remediate this difficulty.

What were the results on the fidelity-of-treatment implementation measure?

Not reported.

Was the fidelity measure also used in control classrooms?

Not applicable.

For any substantively (e.g., effect size ≥ 0.25 for pretest or demographic differences) or statistically significant (e.g., p < 0.05) pretest differences, please describe the extent to which these differences are related to the impact of the treatment. For example, if analyses were conducted to determine that outcomes from this study are due to the intervention and not pretest characteristics, please describe the results of those analyses here.

Please explain any missing data or instances of measures with incomplete pre- or post-test data.

Two pupils discontinued the intervention (one due to difficulties using a mouse and frustration and anxiety caused by this and the other due to poor attendance). However, in order not to compromise the integrity of the randomization, the pupils’ scores were still included in T1 and T2 analysis of the intervention group. Three pupils at T1 and four pupils from the intervention group at T2 were absent on the day of testing and their scores were included using a ‘last value carried forward’ method.

If you have excluded a variable or data that are reported in the study being submitted, explain the rationale for exclusion:

Describe the analyses used to determine whether the intervention produced changes in student outcomes:

To control for baseline differences between the intervention and wait-list control group, an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), controlling for baseline scores, was used and partial eta squared (g2) and Cohen’s d effect sizes were recorded.