Fast ForWord Language Series
Study: Miller et al. (1999)

Describe how students were selected to participate in the study:

Children were identified by their teachers as being “at-risk” for failure in reading and language arts.

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

Standardized testing revealed that these children scored well below age-expected levels of performance and lower in language comprehension and phonological awareness than in word reading ability.

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:

Fast ForWord Language

Specify which condition is the control condition:

Standard school curriculum was used in the control group. A third group comprised students who were receiving special education services, but this third group was excluded from the study.

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.

A stratified randomization procedure was used; sampling was randomized within gender and age groups. Assignment to the training group and control group occurred with a fixed 1.74:1.00 ratio.

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?

Educators were trained in current and established neuroscience findings on how phonemic awareness and the acoustic properties of speech impact rapid development of language and reading skills; the scientific background validating the efficacy of the products; methods for assessment of potential candidates for participation; the selection of appropriate measures for testing and evaluation; effective implementation techniques; and techniques for measuring the gains students have achieved after they have finished using the Fast ForWord product.

Describe when and how fidelity of treatment information was obtained.

Fast ForWord is an individually adaptive computer-based intervention. Consequently, participation rate and progress through the content are the two primary methods of evaluating the fidelity of the implementation. Instructors are primarily tasked with providing a focused training environment and helping students use the exercises properly – strong completion rates indicate that both students and lab instructors are implementing with fidelity.

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

During this study, compliance was a primary consideration and the coaches ensured that the participants adhered to the training schedule when present. Students used Fast ForWord products for an average of 39 training days (range was 15-116 days). At the time of this study, Scientific Learning considered that a satisfactory implementation (more complex measures of participation were developed subsequently).

Was the fidelity measure also used in control classrooms?

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:

Repeated measures were used to determine whether the program group achieved higher gains than the control group. For the TACL: F(1,344)=31.3, p<0.01, for PAT Isolation: F(1,318)=1.36, p<0.24.