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)) |
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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:
Control groups:
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Interventions |
Interventions:
Controls:
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. |
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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) |
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Notes |
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 |
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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 |