Open-ended verbal creativity assessments are commonly administered in psychological research and in educational practice to elementary-aged children. Children's responses are then typically rated by teams of judges who are trained to identify original ideas, hopefully with a degree of inter-rater agreement. Even in cases where the judges are…

Objective: The precise measurement of treatment fidelity (quantity and quality in the delivery of treatment strategies in an intervention) is essential for intervention development, evaluation, and implementation. Various informants are used in fidelity assessment (e.g., observers, practitioners [clinicians, teachers], clients), but these…

Though qualitative research has become more prevalent in practice over the last 30 years, there is still considerable uncertainty among researchers regarding how to ensure inter-rater consistency when teams are tasked with coding qualitative data. In this article, we offer an explanation of a methodology our qualitative team used to achieve…

Purpose: To evaluate the validity, reliability, and sensitivity of the novel Means-End Problem-Solving Assessment Tool (MEPSAT). Methods: Children with typical development and those with motor delay were assessed throughout the first 2 years of life using the MEPSAT. MEPSAT scores were validated against the cognitive and motor subscales of the…

Aim: To describe the development of an intervention-specific fidelity measure and its utilization and to determine whether the newly developed Sitting Together and Reaching to Play (START-Play) intervention was implemented as intended. Also, to quantify differences between START-Play and usual early intervention (uEI) services. Method: A fidelity…

Purpose: Our aim was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the online administered format of the Test of Narrative Language--Second Edition (TNL-2; Gillam & Pearson, 2017), given the importance of assessing children's narrative ability and considerable absence of psychometric studies of spoken language assessments administered online.…

Measuring the quality of classroom-based interactive shared book reading within the early childhood classroom represents a specific dimension of teacher-child interactions that is of great interest to researchers. This interest reflects decades of research demonstrating the benefit of reading to young children in both the home and the classroom.…

The objective in the current paper is to examine the processes of how our research team negotiated meaning using an iterative design approach as we established, developed, and refined a rubric to capture comprehension processes and strategies evident in students' verbal protocols. The overarching project comprises multiple data sets, multiple…

Though treatment integrity measurement is important for research intended to promote social and behavioral outcomes of children at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders (EBDs) in early childhood settings, measurement gaps exist in the field. This paper reports on the development and preliminary psychometric assessment of the treatment…

Research Findings: We evaluated the score stability of the Mathematical Quality of Instruction (MQI), an observational measure of mathematics instruction. Three raters each scored, independently, 100 video-recorded lessons taught by 20 kindergarten teachers in the spring. Using generalizability theory analyses, we decomposed the MQI's score…

In this study, we examined the relationship of special education teachers' performance on the RESET Explicit Instruction observation protocol with student growth on academic measures. Special education teachers provided video recorded observations of three instructional lessons along with data from standardized, curriculum-based academic measures…

Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) has been recommended as a meta-analytic technique for the quantitative synthesis of single-case experimental design (SCED) studies. The HLM approach is flexible and can model a variety of different SCED data complexities, such as intervention heterogeneity. A major advantage of using HLM is that participant…

This project explored the reliability and utility of transcription in coding qualitative data across two studies in a program evaluation context. The first study tested the method of direct audio coding, or coding audio files without transcripts, using qualitative data software. The presence and frequency of codes applied in direct audio coding…

Motivational interviewing (MI) is applied in a variety of clinical and coaching models to promote behavior change, with increasing interest in its potential to optimize school-based implementation fidelity. Yet there has been less consideration of fidelity indicators for MI-embedded coaching and links to outcomes. We leveraged secondary data from…

Purpose: As the federal government has retreated from taking a dominant role in encouraging implementation of common K-12 standards, states and districts have moved to fill this education policy vacuum. This study aims to understand how state and district leaders are navigating this new policy environment. Research Methods/Approach: Drawing upon…