McArthur 2015b.

Methods	Randomised controlled trial (minimisation) 2 treatment groups (phonics, sight words (not relevant)) and 2 control groups (no‐training double‐baseline period for phonics group, double‐baseline for sight words group (not relevant))
Participants	Location/setting: Sydney, Australia Criteria: scored below the mean range for their age (i.e. had a Z score lower than –1) on the CC2 irregular‐word reading test or non‐word reading test. No history of neurological or sensory impairment as indicated on a background questionnaire. Used English as their primary language at school and at home. Recruits: full trial included 85 dyslexic children recruited from the community. The group included in this review – the phonics group – comprised 46 participants. Sex: 46.3% male; 53.7% female Mean age: group 1: 9.53 years (SD 1.51; range 7–12 years); group 2: 9.58 years (SD 1.45; range 7–12 years) Ethnicity: not reported Sample size: 46 dyslexic children Allocation: children were allocated to groups using minimisation randomisation (balanced 1:1 for age, CC2 non‐word reading, CC2 irregular word reading; executed using MINIMPY; Saghaei 2011) (see p 10). Intervention groups: phonics: n = 46 (sex, mean age, SD, and range not reported) sight words: n = 53 (sex, mean age, SD, and range not reported) Control groups: phonics T1: n = 46 (sex, mean age, SD, and range not reported) sight words: n = 53 (sex, mean age, SD, and range not reported)
Interventions	Interventions: phonics: phonics training administered 5 days/week, 30 minutes/day, for 8 weeks, using an online reading training program called LiteracyPlanet. It taught "phonics using 9 exercises across 220 levels that increased in difficulty to train the explicit phonological decoding and encoding of consonants, short vowels, long vowels, blends, digraphs, the bossy e rule, plurals, soft ‘c’ and ‘g,’ dipthongs, ‘r’ sounds, and silent letters. No exercises included irregular words, sentences, or paragraphs of text" (quote p 8). 100% accuracy was required to move to the next level. sight words: children were taught to read irregular words by sight using the exercises in LiteracyPlanet. Controls: phonics T1: prior to training, children completed a double‐baseline period with outcome measures tested before and after 8 weeks of no training. sight words: prior to training, children completed a double‐baseline period with outcome measures tested before and after 8 weeks of no training.
Outcomes	Time of post‐test: immediately after no‐training period (control) and then immediately after 8 weeks of phonics training (experimental) Primary outcomes: trained and untrained irregular word reading accuracy and non‐word reading accuracy Secondary outcomes: word and non‐word reading fluency and reading comprehension Relevant measures: trained and untrained irregular words (experimental: 58 flash cards), non‐word reading accuracy (experimental: 39 untrained non‐words); non‐word reading fluency (TOWRE: non‐word subtest), mixed/regular word reading fluency (TOWRE: sight word subtest), reading comprehension (Test of Everyday Reading Comprehension)
Notes	McArthur 2015b was a replication of McArthur 2015a except the former was randomised while the latter was pseudorandomised, and the former included 2 groups and the latter included 3 groups. Quote from personal communication with author: "In addition to the phonics groups, one group in this study did phonics + sight word training". Since "this review was focused on phonics training, we included data on the 'purest' example of this ‐ i.e. gains in outcome measures in group 1 before and after they did 8 weeks of phonics, and the we compared those gains to control data from the same group of children ‐ i.e. gains in the same outcomes measures in group1 before and after an 8‐week no training period." It is noteworthy that although all children were tested for their non‐verbal intelligence, children with non‐verbal IQ scores below the mean range were not excluded from the study since intelligence does not appear to predict reading ability or response to treatment. Contacted author for the numbers for sex of participants. Study start and end dates: January 2011 to December 2013 (see p 4) Funding: "This research was funded by NHMRC Project 488518 and ARC DP0879556" (quote, p 19). Declarations/potential conflicts of interest: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript" (quote, p 19). At the time of publication, Associate Professor Genevieve McArthur was an Academic Editor of PeerJ, which may be considered a competing interest.
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Low risk	Quote from publication: "Children were allocated to groups using minimisation randomisation (balanced 1:1 for age, CC2 nonword reading, CC2 irregular word reading; executed using MINIMPY; Saghaei, 2011), which is considered the most appropriate sequence allocation procedure for trials comprising fewer than 100 participants. It is considered methodologically equivalent to randomisation by CONSORT" (p 10).
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Low risk	Quote from publication: "The lead research assistant on the project allocated children to each group and arranged their training. They concealed group allocation from research assistants who conducted the test session" (p 10).
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Quote from publication: "Unlike drug trials, it is difficult to guarantee double blinding in cognitive treatment studies. However, parents and children were not told their group allocation, and all children received exactly the same type of training (in different orders). Most parents and children lack the expertise to discriminate between different types of reading. In addition, no tester assessed the same child twice, and no tester was aware of the child’s group allocation (i.e. the tester was blind to group allocation). Thus, it is highly likely this study used a double‐blind procedure" (p 11).
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Quote from publication: "In addition, no tester assessed the same child twice, and no tester was aware of the child’s group allocation (i.e. the tester was blind to group allocation)" (p 11).
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Comment: 35 participants in total dropped out (29%). There were similar numbers in each group, and reasons for dropout were random. This is similar to McArthur 2015a, which used almost identical methods. This suggests that attrition was not unusual for reading training studies of this type, and is similar to mean attrition rates for cognitive behavioural interventions done with children with clinical problems (Karlson 2009).
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Unclear risk	Comment: data reported for all outcome measures outlined in methods; adequate detail for data to be included in analysis.
Other bias	Low risk	Comment: none apparent