A Meta-Analytic Review of Family-Implemented Social and Communication Interventions for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities

Abstract

This study presents a meta-analysis of single-case experimental research on family-implemented interventions for improving the social and other communicative behaviors of individuals with developmental disabilities (DD). A total of 40 studies were included in this meta-analysis. The Tau-U effect size with the Kruskal-Wallis and the Dunn post hoc tests were calculated to analyze the following variables: age, communication and language characteristic, intervention type, and dependent variable. Overall, the results indicate that family-implemented interventions have a moderate effect on the social and other communicative behaviors of individuals with DD. Analyses for age yielded statistically significant findings for preschool-aged individuals compared to adolescent- and adult-aged individuals. Small to moderate effect sizes were noted across categories for communication and language characteristic, intervention type, and dependent variable. Limitations and implications for future research and for practitioners are discussed.