This article reports on a content analysis of six school psychology journals spanning the years 2005-2009, with a particular focus on published intervention research. The analysis showed that (a) research articles were the most frequently published, with the largest category being descriptive research; (b) the percentage of intervention studies was higher (9.3%) than previously reported but lower than reported in special education journals (15.9%); (c) of the published interventions, the most frequent design was quasi-experimental, followed by single-subject research; (d) most intervention studies were conducted in school settings utilizing children in kindergarten through Grade 5, followed as a distant second by middle school settings; (e) the preponderance of intervention studies were academic or social/behavioral, with emotional interventions being the least represented; and (f) of the academic interventions, the most widely studied dimension was reading, followed as a distant second by math. The findings are discussed in terms of their relevance for addressing the research-to-practice gap as well as their implications for school psychology research and practice. C
Objective: There is limited evidence about the efficacy of cognitive interventions for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, aside from the methodological quality of the studies analyzed, the methodology used in previous meta-analyses is itself a risk of bias as different types of effect sizes (ESs) were calculated and combined. This study aimed at examining the results of nonpharmacological interventions for AD with an adequate control of statistical methods and to demonstrate a different approach to meta-analysis. Method: ESs were calculated with the independent groups pre/post design. Average ESs for separate outcomes were calculated and moderator analyses were performed so as to offer an overview of the effects of bias. Results: Eighty-seven outcomes from 19 studies (n = 812) were meta-analyzed. ESs were small on average for cognitive and functional outcomes after intervention. Moderator analyses showed no effect of control of bias, although ESs were different from zero only in some circumstances (e.g., memory outcomes in randomized studies). Cognitive interventions showed no more efficacy than placebo interventions, and functional ESs were consistently low across conditions. Conclusions: cognitive interventions delivered may not be effective in AD probably due to the fact that the assumptions behind the cognitive interventions might be inadequate. Future directions include a change in the type of intervention as well as the use of outcomes other than standardized tests. Additional studies with larger sample sizes and different designs are needed to increase the power of both primary studies and meta-analyses.
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