Learning Strategies Curriculum: Assignment Completion Strategy
Study: Hughes et al. (2002)

Describe how students were selected to participate in the study:

Students were 9 middle-school students who were classified as having a learning disability according to state of Pennsylvania guidelines. They were enrolled in at least 3 mainstream academic classes per day. They were nominated to participate by their resource class teachers who were asked to select students with extreme difficulty completing and turning in homework assignments. On average, they turned in 44% of their assignments.

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

They were classified as having a learning disability according to state of Pennsylvania guidelines.

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?

100.0%

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?

%

Please describe the study design:

A multiple-probe across-students design was used and replicated twice. Three students participated in each iteration of the design. There were three conditions: baseline, instruction, and maintenance. All students started baseline at the same time. Three students began instruction when their baselines were stable; other students continued in baseline. When the students being instructed showed improvement, three more students began instruction. When they showed improvement, the final three students received instruction.

Clarify and provide a detailed description of the treatment in the submitted program/intervention:

The intervention was instruction in the Assignment Completion Strategy as specified in the instructor's manual by Hughes, Schumaker, & Deshler (2005). Students learned a strategy consisting of overt and cognitive behaviors involved in assignment completion, such as recording assignments quickly and accurately, analyzing assignments, devising a plan for assignment completion, working on the assignment and turning it in. The instructor provided description of the strategy, modeled the strategy, ensured the students could name the strategy steps, conducted simulated practice activities with the students, and provided the students with feedback about their performance,

Clarify what procedures occurred during the control/baseline condition (third, competing conditions are not considered; if you have a third, competing condition [e.g., multi-element single subject design with a third comparison condition], in addition to your control condition, identify what the competing condition is [data from this competing condition will not be used]):

During baseline, students were given assignments in the resource room, and data on the way that they recorded those assignments and completed those assignments were collected. Four assignments were presented for each baseline probe. Meanwhile, the number of assignments given by general education teachers that were completed by the students and the quality of those products was also gathered from those teachers. Data were also gathered from their assignment notebooks on how they recorded their assignments.

Please describe how replication of treatment effect was demonstrated (e.g., reversal or withdrawal of intervention, across participants, across settings)

The treatment effect was demonstrated by starting the intervention at different times across participants and measuring students' performance of the strategy on assignments given in the resource room and in the general education classroom. In all 9 students' cases, their performance improved in the first set of assignments in the resource room after instruction began.

Please indicate whether (and how) the design contains at least three demonstrations of experimental control (e.g., ABAB design, multiple baseline across three or more participants).

In each iteration of the design, three participants participated. Since there were three iterations of the design, each containing three students, there were nine demonstrations of experimental control in this study.

If the study is a multiple baseline, is it concurrent or non-concurrent?

Concurrent

How was the program delivered?

Individually
Small Group
Classroom

Study measures are classified as targeted, broader, or administrative data according to the following definitions:

• Targeted measures
  Assess outcomes, such as competencies or skills, that the program was directly targeted to improve.
  • In the academic domain, targeted measures typically are not the very items taught but rather novel items structured similarly to the content addressed in the program. For example, if a program taught word-attack skills, a targeted measure would be decoding of pseudo words. If a program taught comprehension of cause-effect passages, a targeted measure would be answering questions about cause-effect passages structured similarly to those used during intervention, but not including the very passages used for intervention.
  • In the behavioral domain, targeted measures evaluate aspects of external or internal behavior the program was directly targeted to improve and are operationally defined.
• Broader measures
  Assess outcomes that are related to the competencies or skills targeted by the program but not directly taught in the program.
  • In the academic domain, if a program taught word-level reading skill, a broader measure would be answering questions about passages the student reads. If a program taught calculation skill, a broader measure would be solving word problems that require the same kinds of calculation skill taught in the program.
  • In the behavioral domain, if a program taught a specific skill like on-task behavior in one classroom, a broader measure would be on-task behavior in another setting.
• Administrative data measures apply only to behavioral intervention tools and are measures such as office discipline referrals (ODRs) and graduation rates, which do not have psychometric properties as do other, more traditional targeted or broader measures.

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