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Expanding Frontiers in Research Designs, Methods, and Measurement in Support of Evidence-Based Practice in Early Childhood Special Education

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Handbook of Early Childhood Special Education

Abstract

In this chapter, we discuss advances in research designs and methods useful for generating plausible causal evidence in early childhood special education. In addition, we describe contemporary perspectives about measurement and present example applications in early childhood special education. We begin the chapter by reviewing briefly the strengths, limitations, and implementation challenges associated with the conduct of randomized controlled trials or randomized field trials in early childhood special education research. This includes discussion of various design validity threats and issues related to causal inference. We then consider quasi-experimental and correlational research designs and discuss circumstances under which these designs might be appropriately and usefully applied to generate plausible causal evidence in early childhood special education research. Finally, we review current conceptualizations about reliability and validity and illustrate how generalizability theory and item response theory represent measurement advances for application in early childhood special education. Throughout the chapter, we illustrate the use of these designs and methodologies in early childhood education or early childhood special education through hypothetical examples or by presenting examples of published studies that have implemented these designs.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It is important to acknowledge, that findings from RCTs or RFTs might also be susceptible to design validity threats (e.g., differential attrition, poor fidelity of intervention implementation).

  2. 2.

    Rasch models also exist for polychotomously scored items (see, e.g., Bond & Fox, 2007).

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Acknowledgments

Work reported in this paper was supported, in part, by a grant from the National Center for Special Education Research in the Institute of Education Sciences to the University of Florida (R324B120002). The opinions expressed are those of the authors, not the funding agency.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Anita Zucker Center for Excellence in Early Childhood Studies, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA

    Crystal D. Bishop

  2. Anita Zucker Center for Excellence in Early Childhood Studies and School of Special Education, School Psychology, and Early Childhood Studies, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA

    Patricia A. Snyder

  3. Anita Zucker Center for Excellence in Early Childhood Studies and School of Human Development and Organizational Studies in Education, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA

    James Algina

  4. School of Human Development and Organizational Studies in Education, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA

    Walter Leite

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  1. Crystal D. Bishop
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  4. Walter Leite
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Correspondence to Crystal D. Bishop .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Florida, Newberry, Florida, USA

    Brian Reichow

  2. Dept Allied Health Sciences, UNC, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA

    Brian A. Boyd

  3. Department of Special Education, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA

    Erin E. Barton

  4. Frank Porter Graham Child Development In, Univ of N. Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA

    Samuel L. Odom

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Bishop, C.D., Snyder, P.A., Algina, J., Leite, W. (2016). Expanding Frontiers in Research Designs, Methods, and Measurement in Support of Evidence-Based Practice in Early Childhood Special Education. In: Reichow, B., Boyd, B., Barton, E., Odom, S. (eds) Handbook of Early Childhood Special Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28492-7_27

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