Request to Conduct Research within the District
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Contact: Dynah Oviedo-Lim, M.A., email Dynah.OviedoLim@tusd1.org
Accountability and Research, 442 E. 7th Street, Tucson, Arizona 85705
The following information must be provided in full and returned to Accountability and Research before any research project, including surveys, can be reviewed and processed.  Label each section clearly with the headings provided below, and maintain the same order.  Include a hard copy of your proposal and the summary form that follows as well as an electronic file (email).
  1. Today's Date
  2. Full Name
  3. Complete Mailing Address
  4. Telephone Number
  5. Organization or Institution
  6. Purpose (thesis, dissertation, etc.)
  7. Student Achievement (How does your study relate to student achievement, i.e. increase student achievement, prevent school dropout, help schools improve)
  8. Signature of Advisor (if thesis or dissertation)
  9. Research Project Title
  10. Purpose of Study
    1. Hypothesis(es) of Study (if applicable)
    2. Question(s) to be answered by research
  11. Theoretical Framework (not more than 1 page)
  12. Methods/Techniques
    1. Research Design/Data Collection
    2. Method(s) of data analysis (2 pages or less)
    3. Number of subjects and grade levels needed
    4. Number and names of school sites (or departments) you need to complete study (be specific)
    5. Describe any "treatment" to be applied to subjects (not more than 1 page)
    6. Investigators - number, names and qualifications
    7. Resources needed
      1. Amount of time needed per week AND for total project for students, teacher(s), and administrator(s)
      2. Facilities (rooms, etc.) needed
      3. Materials needed
  13. Instruments To Be Used (e.g. tests, surveys, observation forms, data collection forms).  Include evidence of validity and reliability.  (Attach to your request any survey or questionnaire, data form or unpublished instruments.  Also a general description of any nationally-developed standardized instrument must be attached.)
  14. Use of Results
    1. Feedback to participants (and others)
    2. Publication(s)
  15. Benefit of Study to District
  16. Legal Requirements
    1. Terms and Conditions - sign and date the enclosed form.
    2. Parent Permission Form - attach form and include:
      1. that the project has "been tentatively approved by the Tucson Unified School District."
      2. that results will be kept "confidential."
      3. the place where parent given consent by signing name.
      4. the statement as to what parent is consenting to let research do with subject.
      5. the phone number where researcher can be contacted if questions.
    3. Teacher Permission Form (if applicable) - approval by teacher is needed if researcher is using classroom time with his/her students.
  17. Additional Information (if necessary)

EXAMPLE OF RESEARCH PROPOSAL
(Items 9 through 14)

RESEARCH PROPOSAL: READING SKILLS OF LANGUAGE-IMPAIRED CHILDREN

  1. PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

    The purpose of this study is to compare and describe the performances between groups and within groups of children with receptive language impairments,  children with expressive language impairments, and children with no language or learning handicaps, on the reading skills of word attach, word identification, word comprehension, and passage comprehension when Performance scale score on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) is controlled.

    The research questions to be answered are:

    1. Does reading performance differ significantly for the three language groups regardless of category of reading skill?
    2. Do the three language groups differ significantly from each other on the specific reading skills of word attack, word identification, word comprehension, and passage comprehension?
    3. Within each language group, are there significant differences in performance on the four categories of reading skill?

  2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK/RATIONALE

    Intricate connections have been postulated between language and reading.  Synder (1980) described some of the component processes in reading (decoding, sight word recognition, syntactical comprehension, passage comprehension and recall) and the language skills she considered as prerequisites.  Menyuk and Flood (1981) delineated specific reading problems that would be expected to occur depending on specific language deficits.  Johnson and Myklebust (1967) have stated that reading requires one to superimpose a system of visual symbols on previously learned language; consequently, a language deficit would interfere with acquisition of reading skills.

    The research that has been done has substantiated that many language-impaired children become disabled readers when they reach school age (Aram, Ekelman and Nation, 1984; Strominger, 1983; McGrady, 1964).  From fourth grade on, a child is expected to gain a substantial amount of new information by reading the required texts, and often it is at this point that language-impaired children begin to demonstrate problems that pervade all academic areas.  However, empirical research concerning the effects of language impairments on reading achievement in sparse, and only one study (McGrady) has correlated specific language deficits (receptive vs. expressive) with specific reading problems.  Consequently, based on empirical data, little is know concerning the effect of specific language deficits on reading skills.

  3. METHODS/TECHNIQUES

    1. Research Design/Data Collection

      Language-Impaired Groups
      All children in these two groups will have been classified by their districts as having language impairments severe enough to qualify them for placement in a self-contained SLI class.  All children who have parental permission and who fit the exclusionary criteria will be tested in random order within each class.  Children will be assigned to the Receptive group or the Expressive group based on their performance on the Listening and Speaking composites of the Test of Language Development-Intermediate (Hammill & Newcomer, 1982).

      Control Group
      Controls will be selected from a randomized list of all children within the chosen age range within each school.  The first 30 students on the list will be given parent permission forms.  The records of those students who return signed forms will be read in randomized order to establish that they do not fit any of the exclusionary criteria.  Controls will be tested after the language-impaired children are tested and assigned to groups.  In each school, the number of Controls to be tested will equal the number of SLI subjects tested so that Controls will share equal representation of the same school population as the language-impaired children.

    2. Methods(s) of data analysis

      Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA).

    3. Number of subjects and grade levels

      Subjects will be selected from schools in the Tucson and Phoenix areas that have intermediate level Severe Language Impaired (SLI) classes.  The three groups of children included will be those from SLI classes that have receptive language impairments, those from SLI classes that have expressive impairments, and controls who have no learning or language handicaps.  All subjects will be between the ages of 10-0 and 12-11, have English as the predominant home language, will have normal vision and hearing, will have scored at lease 85 on the Performance scale of the WISC-R, and will have no history of severe emotional disturbance or gross neurological abnormalities.  Controls will have no history of special education.  With the exception of Performance scale scores for the Controls, this information is to be taken from each student's confidential and cumulative files.  Each group will consist of a maximum of 30 and a minimum of 20 subjects.

    4. Number and names of school sites

      Rogers, Tully, and Maldonado Elementary Schools

    5. Treatment

      Each of the four instruments to be used is highly standardized with clear directions for administration.  The instruments are:  Test of Language Development-Intermediate (TOLD-I) (Hammill & Newcomer, 1982), Performance scale of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R PS) (Wechsler, 1974), four subtests from the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests-Revised (WRMT-R) (Woodcock, in progress), and two reading subtests from the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, Form 7 (ITBS) (Heironymus, et al., 1983).  Testing will follow the standardized procedures.

      All subjects will be individually tested on the TOLD-I in the first session (approximately 1/2 hour) and the WRMT-R in the second session (approximately 1 hour).  Controls will be given the WISC-R PS (approximately 40 minutes), after the TOLD-I, in the first session.  Each language-impaired class will be tested as a group on the subtests of the ITBS (1 1/4 hours).  ITBS scores for the Controls will be taken from the records of their April 1985 tests.  The WISC-R PS will be used only as a covariate and will not be interpreted in the findings.

    6. Investigators

      Administration of all tests will be conducted by the Project Director and two graduate students in Special Education who are certified Learning Disability Specialists.  Both examiners will be trained by the Project Director using videotaped and direct observations of each examiner administering each test.  During the research project, all protocols will be double-checked by a second examiner for scoring accuracy.

    7. Resources needed

      Students All SLI students eligible according to age and exclusionary criteria, and an equal number of non-handicapped students.

      Time Individual testing will take two sessions, the first approximately 1/2 hour for SLI subjects and 1 1/4 hours for Controls, and the second, approximately 1 hour.  A third session will be necessary for each SLI class participating in the study for group administration of the ITBS.  The time required to administer the two subtests is approximately 1 1/4 hours.

      Testing rooms One small, quiet, and well-lighted room will be needed for test administration.

      Materials

      • Confidential and cumulative folders of SLI students and Controls who have obtained parent permission will need to be made available to the Project Director or her assistant to establish eligibility and to provide WISC-R and ITBS scores.
      • Lists of students in SLI classes and of non-handicapped students

  4. INSTRUMENTS

    Tests of Language Development-Intermediate The TOLD-I is comprised of five subtests: 

    1. Sentence Combining
    2. Characteristics
    3. Word Ordering
    4. Generals
    5. Grammatic Comprehension.
    The test differentiates receptive from expressive language performance based on composite scores.  The TOLD-I was standardized on over 800 subtests, ages 8-6 to 12-11, representative of the U.S. population as described in the 1980 Census.  Internal consistency and test-retest reliability for the composite quotients were above .90.  Criterion validity ranged from .56 to .86.  Results of tests conducted on construct validity, content validity, relationship to school achievement, and item validity were acceptable.

    Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests-Revised The WRMT-R is an individually administered test of reading readiness and achievement.  The following subtests will be taken from it: 

    1. Word Attack
    2. Word Identification
    3. Word Comprehension
    4. Passage Comprehension
    The WRMT-R is a revision of the 1973 Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests and is expected to be an improvement in regard to standardization, flexibility of assessment, variety of scores, reliability of individual subtests, and statistical equation with other diagnostic measures.  The WRMT-R has been standardized on over 5000 subjects representative of the population of the U.S. as described by the 1980 Census.  It has been designed so that reliability coefficients are above .90.  Results of validity tests on the 1973 WRMT are above acceptable standards, and the WRMT-R is being designed to improve on these.  Dr. Woodcock has offered to make the revised edition available for data collection before publication.

    Iowa Tests of Basic Skills Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension will be the two subtests used from the ITBS.  Since the ITBS is the achievement test adopted by the state of Arizona, this review will not site the reliability and validity statistics.  Results of all such tests were above acceptable levels and are reported in Hieronymus, A. N., Lindquist, E. F., & Hoover, H. D. (1982).  Manual for School Administrators: Iowa Tests of Basic Skills for Form 7/8. Chicago: The Riverside Publishing Company

    Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children:  Performance The WISC-R is a widely used, individually administered test of cognitive abilities.  The Performance scale of the WISC-R is generally accepted as an indication of non-verbal intellectual potential.  Since it is the measure used with the SLI subjects, it was selected as the measure to be used with the Controls also.  It has been standardized on 2200 subjects representative of the U.S. population as described by the 1980 Census.  The split-half reliability coefficient for the entire scale is .90, and ranges from .70 to .85 for the individual subtests.  Test-retest reliabilities for subjects of comparable ages to the subjects in the proposed study is .89 for the entire scale and range from .69 to .86 for the individual subtests.

  5. USE OF THE RESULTS

    The results of this study will be the basis of the Project Director's doctoral dissertation.  In addition, a number of articles will be generated for submission to such journals as Journal of Speech and Hearing Research and Journal of Learning Disabilities.  Results will be submitted for presentation at the national conference of the Council for Exceptional Children.  The information generated by this study is expected to be a valuable addition to the literature documenting the effects of language impairments on reading skills so that preventative and remedial educational programs may be improved.

  6. EDUCATIONAL IMPORTANCE

    The educational implications of this study are two-fold.  First, the prediction of reading difficulties could serve as a guide for early academic intervention.  Forewarning that a language-impaired child might have difficulty learning to read, and specific information as to what skills might cause the greatest difficulty, can help the speech/language specialist plan an effective educational program.  Second, knowledge about the effects of specific language impairments on reading skills may enhance parental involvement in the developmental learning process.  In conjunction with the reading specialist, the speech/language specialist may make specific suggestions to parents concerning activities they can do with their child to facilitate the acquisition of reading skills.

    The results of this particular study will provide the SLI teacher with information regarding the receptive and expressive language competency of their students, based on the TOLD-I, and information regarding their performance on the two subtests from the ITBS.  Unless the scores of a Control student are extreme, the TOLD-I is not expected to provide necessary information to the regular classroom teacher, but is necessary within the design of this study.  SLI teachers and regular classroom teachers will be provided with information concerning the performance of their students on the four subtests on the WRMT-R.  WISC-R Performance scale scores will not be shared with the teachers as they are only to be used as a method of controlling for disparate cognitive abilities.