This case study considers classroom-based qualitative research conducted using semistructured interviews and classroom-based ethnography and carried out in a publicly funded special education program for high school students with autism spectrum disorder. In response to a paucity of special education research focused on student perspectives, the…

Obtaining informed consent is the foundation of ethics in clinical research involving human participants. Individuals who provide informed consent acknowledge they understand all aspects of the research including the nature of the study, the risks and benefits of participation, the participants' rights, study procedures, research duration,…

This article discusses estimation of average treatment effects for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) using grouped administrative data to help improve data access. The focus is on design-based estimators, derived using the building blocks of experiments, that are conducive to grouped data for a wide range of RCT designs, including clustered and…

Realist evaluation (RE) is a research design increasingly used in program evaluation, that aims to explore and understand the influence of context and underlying mechanisms on intervention or program outcomes. Several methodological challenges, however, are associated with this approach. This article summarizes RE key principles and examines some…

This innovative guide is now in a revised and expanded second edition with an even stronger applied focus. It helps educators harness the potential of single-case design (SCD) as a critical element of data-based decision making in a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS). The authors present simple and complex SCDs and demonstrate their use to…

To conduct a multilevel meta-analysis of multiple single-case experimental design (SCED) studies, the individual participant data (IPD) can be analyzed in one or two stages. In the one-stage approach, a multilevel model is estimated based on the raw data. In the two-stage approach, an effect size is calculated for each participant and these effect…

How does a researcher investigate phenomena that continually emerge through, with and as various practices? This paper explores this question, drawing on transformative reflections on the unfolding process of an empirical research project investigating professional practice in Dutch early childhood education. The project initially applied an open,…

Research seeking to understand and improve social conditions for marginalized youth would benefit from merging complex mixed methods research designs emphasizing multilevel data and participatory social justice principles. We contribute to mixed methods research by introducing a novel framework that accomplishes this task and by illustrating its…

Preregistration and registered reports are two promising open science practices for increasing transparency in the scientific process. In particular, they create transparency around one of the most consequential distinctions in research design: the data analytics decisions made before data collection and post-hoc decisions made afterwards.…

This open access book discusses challenges in school improvement research and different methodological approaches that have the potential to foster school improvement research. Research on school improvement and accountability analysis places high demands on a study's design and method. The potential of combining the depth of case studies with the…

As the international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) become more popular, policy makers and education practitioners are interested in collecting as much student background information as possible to better understand the learning context of their students. To collect such abundant information, administrators need to develop a lot of questions.…

Growth in autism research necessitates corresponding attention to autism research ethics, including ethical and meaningful inclusion of diverse participants. This paper presents the results of a review of research ethics literature, strengthened by consultation with a task force involving autism professionals, family members, and self-advocates on…

Introduction: Planned missing designs are relatively new to the field of psychological and developmental research. These designs allow researchers to randomly assign participants to missing data conditions; participants are either randomly selected to receive or not receive particular measures or items during data collection (Little &…

Background: When RCTs are not feasible and time series data are available, panel data methods can be used to estimate treatment effects on outcomes, by exploiting variation in policies and conditions over time and across locations. A complication with these methods, however, is that treatment timing often varies across the sample, for example, due…

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) identifies existing research on educational interventions, assesses the quality of the research, and summarizes and disseminates the evidence from studies that meet WWC standards. The WWC aims to provide enough information so educators can use the research to make informed decisions in their settings. This…