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. 2018 Nov 14;2018(11):CD009115. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD009115.pub3

Hurry 2007.

Methods Randomised controlled trial
2 intervention groups (phonics + phoneme awareness, Reading Recovery (not relevant)) and 2 control groups (untrained, Reading Recovery (not relevant))
Participants Location/setting: year 2 children from English schools which provided Reading Recovery
Criteria: 1 of 7 poorest year 2 scorers in 18 schools on the Diagnostic Survey (Clay 1985)
Recruits: 42% received free school meals. 1 child was excluded from the study because of missing baseline data. All children had IQ in the mean range (92–96).
Sex: 61% male; 39% female
Mean age: not reported (SD not reported; range 6–6.6 years)
Ethnicity: 16% spoke English as a second language
Sample size: 142 children
Allocation: random allocation (within schools) of poor readers to intervention and control groups
Intervention groups:
  1. phonics + phoneme awareness: n = 96 (n = 92 for post‐test data) (sex, mean age, SD, and range not reported)

  2. Reading Recovery: n = 95 (n = 89 for post‐test data) (sex, mean age, SD, and range not reported)


Control groups:
  1. untrained: n = 46 (n = 43 for post‐test data) (sex, mean age, SD, and range not reported)

  2. Reading Recovery: n = 41 (n = 40 for post‐test data) (sex, mean age, SD, and range not reported)

Interventions Interventions:
  1. phonics + phoneme awareness (phonological training): "Following Bradley and Bryant (1985), this involved sound awareness training plus word building with plastic letters. The training initially focused on alliteration and rhyme but also included work on boundary sounds and vowels and digraphs in response to the child's progress. Children also matched sounds with plastic letters and constructed words" (quote, p 234; phonics + phonological awareness).

  2. Reading Recovery


Controls:
  1. untrained: children in within‐school control groups received standard provision available in school. Since these children were poor readers, they received around 21 minutes of extra help per week with reading.

  2. Reading Recovery


Procedure: intervention was 40 sessions (10 minutes each, one‐to‐one with tutor, spread over 7 months). 5 tutors delivered phonological training. Did not share details of intervention with classroom teachers.
Outcomes Time of post‐test: immediately after training completed
Primary outcomes: regular and irregular word reading accuracy (BAS word reading) and reading comprehension (Neale Prose Reading)
Notes
  1. For the phonological training group, the article reported that the 6 poorest readers from 23 schools were allocated to either the phonological training (n = 4) or the within‐school control (n = 2). This would equate to 92 participants in the phonological training group. However, Table 1 (p 232) reported that there were 96 participants in the phonological training group. We contacted Jane Hurry to explain this. We received a reply on the 16 January 2012: "I have now looked at the file and find that of the 23 Phon schools we actually selected the bottom 7 children from 5 of the schools. Of those 5 extra children, there was missing baseline data for 1, so that child never made it into the study. The other extra 4 were assigned to the intervention, hence the 96" (quote).

  2. We excluded the 22 Reading Recovery schools (and controls) from our analysis since it involved text reading (an exclusion criterion of our review).

  3. We excluded the 18 untrained control schools since the within‐school controls were superior controls for the trained children because they were better matched for SES and learning environment.

  4. Contacted Hurry on 14 September about which subtests were used from the Neale Prose Reading. Replied that they used the accuracy and comprehension subtests to make up their Neale Prose Reading measure (see Table 2). We used this as a measure of reading comprehension.

  5. There were 3 post‐tests: post‐test 1 (after completion), post‐test 2 (1 year later), post‐test 3 (3.5 years later). We included the first post‐test results in this review since all other studies in this review reported immediate post‐test data.

  6. Contacted Hurry for clarification on:

    1. participant numbers (Hurry responded on 16 January 2012; see above);

    2. attrition (Hurry responded on 17 January 2012; see response in 'Risk of bias' table below),

    3. which subtest of the Neale (Prose) Reading was used: Neale accuracy and comprehension scores (03 February 2012),

    4. approximately how many minutes/hours the participants spent on phonological training per week (Hurry responded on 16 February 2012: "I confirm that each child was given 40 x 10 min individual sessions = 400 minutes" (quote)).


Study start and end dates: September 1992 to December 1996
Funding: "This work was conducted with the...funding of QCA" (quote, p 246).
Declared/potential conflicts of interest: none reported
Risk of bias
Bias Authors' judgement Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias) Low risk Quote from publication: for the relevant groups (phonological training and within‐school controls): the "six poorest readers randomly assigned to phonological training (N = 4) or to within‐school control condition (N = 2)" (p 231).
Allocation concealment (selection bias) Low risk Comment: could not foresee assignment due to central allocation of participants to groups.
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) 
 All outcomes Unclear risk Comment: no information provided; however, participants were children with little understanding of reading treatment techniques and hence were unlikely to understand allocation.
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) 
 All outcomes Low risk Quote from publication: "At each of the three post‐tests, members of the research team tested the children 'blind', that is without knowing to which group children belonged" (p 233).
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) 
 All outcomes Low risk Comment: for the relevant groups (phonological training and within‐school controls), 4 and 3 (respectively) children dropped out between pre‐ and post‐test 1. We requested more information from author. Received response on 17 January 2012 that some children "had failed to receive a sufficient amount of the intervention, usually as a result of moving school" while others "could not be tested because they had moved too far or were not traced" (quote). Thus, both groups experienced the same (relatively low) dropout rate for reasons extraneous to the study.
Selective reporting (reporting bias) Unclear risk Comment: data reported for all reading tests listed in methods; adequate detail for data to be included in analysis.
Other bias Low risk Comment: none apparent