Tutoring Buddy
Study: DuBois et al. (2014)

Describe how students were selected to participate in the study:

We asked all kindergarten and 1st grade teachers in one of our local schools to nominate students for the study. Teachers were asked to nominate students that were in need of an intervention targeting letter sound knowledge.

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

Teacher nomination

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:

Tutoring Buddy

Specify which condition is the control condition:

We used a wait-list control

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):

N/A

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.

By use of a random number generator, 15 students were assigned to the treatment group. The remaining 15 students were assigned to the wait-list control group and received intervention on completion of the study.

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?

Graduate school psychology students were trained by the first author during a 1-hour training session. All achieved the criterion of reaching 100% on a fidelity checklist prior to implementation of the IV. Treatment integrity was high throughout the study.

Describe when and how fidelity of treatment information was obtained.

Treatment integrity data were gathered using a 22-item procedural checklist that was completed by a graduate student observing the interventionist. These data were collected during 42% of intervention sessions. Treatment integrity was calculated by dividing the number of components observed by the total number of steps.

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

The average integrity score across all intervention components was 99%.

Was the fidelity measure also used in control classrooms?

N/A

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.

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:

Treatment effects were evaluated via a 2-level multi-level model. Separate analyses were performed for each dependent measure wherein slope and intercept (follow-up time point) were modeled for each student. Group parameters were modeled at level 2.