Issues in Conducting Intervention Research: Secondary Students

Abstract

When considering intervention research with students with learning disabilities, one is initially struck by the paucity of such research relative to other types of research in learning disabilities. In a recent evaluation of major special education journals, Lessen, Dudzinski, Karsh, and Van Acker (1989) were able to identify only 119 academic intervention studies with students with learning disabilities, from a pool of 3,106 articles published since 1978. Only 35 of these articles involved secondary students. In contrast, Kavale and Nye (1985–1986) located over 1,000 descriptive studies that compared learning disabled and normally achieving students on any number of measures of social or academic functioning. This relative shortage of intervention research in special education in favor of a plethora of comparative research has previously been noted by Forness and Kavale (1985) and by Scruggs and Mastropieri (1985). Although one may not agree with Lovitt’s (1989) declaration that “we don’t need any more comparison studies in the field of learning disabilities” (p. 480), there nevertheless does appear to be far too little research intended to identify methods for improving the social or academic functioning of students with learning disabilities.