Intervention in School and Clinic

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Examining the Role of Group Experimental Research in Establishing Evidenced-Based Practices

Lysandra Cook, Bryan G. Cook, Timothy J. Landrum and Melody Tankersley
Intervention in School and Clinic 2008; 44; 76
DOI: 10.1177/1053451208324504

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Features Intervention in School and Clinic
Volume 44 Number 2
November 2008 76-82
© 2008 Hammill Institute on Disabilities
10.1177/1053451208324504
http://isc.sagepub.com
hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com

Examining the Role of Group

Experimental
Research in
Establishing
Evidenced-Based
Practices
LYSANDRA COOK
BRYAN G. COOK
TIMOTHY J. LANDRUM
MELODY TANKERSLEY

Using evidence-based practices, or those instructional techniques shown by research to improve student outcomes
meaningfully, increases the performance of students with disabilities and should therefore be a priority for special
educators. But how does a practice come to be considered evidence based? The unique characteristics of group
experimental research (i.e., the use of a meaningful comparison group and the active manipulation of an interven-
tion) allow research consumers to conclude whether an intervention causes desired changes in student outcomes. As
such, group experimental research is one type of research that is well suited to determine evidence-based practices.
Examples of group experimental research are provided from the contemporary special education literature.

Keywords: effective instruction; law; legal; policy; personnel; preparation; professional development; control
group designs; research; education; training; teachers

E vidence-based practices (EBPs) are “interventions,

strategies, and supports that have research docu-
menting their effectiveness” (Strain & Dunlap, 2006, p.
1). In short, EBPs are practices that have been shown
by reliable research to result in desirable outcomes.
Despite the obvious and direct benefits of using EBPs,
many teachers in both general and special education
have not implemented the most effective teaching tech-
niques in their classrooms (Cook & Schirmer, 2006;
Kauffman, 1996). For example, Wehby, Symons,
Canale, and Go (1998) observed that even the effective
use of specific teacher praise, a relatively undemanding
76
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and straightforward EBP, “is almost nonexistent” (p.
51). Accordingly, student performance often falls short
of what could be attained if teachers routinely imple-
mented the most effective instructional strategies. The
implementation of EBPs appears especially important
for students with disabilities, given that they have not
traditionally achieved highly under conventional
instructional approaches (Cook, Landrum, Tankersley,
& Kauffman, 2003; Vaughn & Linan-Thompson,
2006).
To locate reliable information on which to base their
teaching, teachers and other educational stakeholders

are often encouraged to read and apply the research
reported in professional journals (Greenwood &
Maheady, 2001). However, without a sufficient back-
ground in research design and statistics, interpreting the
research literature can prove deceptive. For example,
not all research can answer questions such as “What
works?” and “Which practices are evidence based?”
Lacking training in the principles of research design,
many educators may form false beliefs that practices are
evidence based after reading research that in fact does
not address the issue of whether a practice works.
Different research designs result in specific types
of information that answer different questions. For
example, qualitative research might yield important
information regarding how specific teachers feel about
implementing an instructional strategy or why they
decided to maintain or discontinue the use of a teaching
technique. However, the determination of whether a
practice works, or is evidence based, cannot be made on
the basis of teachers’ perceptions. Indeed, only one type
of research design allows research consumers to draw
conclusions as to whether a teaching practice works,
and that is experimental research. Although experimen-
tal research (i.e., including group experimental and
quasi-experimental research, as well as single-subject
research) cannot indicate why a teaching practice
works or how teachers and students feel about an
instructional approach, both of which are important
issues addressed by other types of research, it is unique
in that it can determine the general effectiveness of a
practice.
Despite the recent attention paid to EBPs in legisla-
tion and the professional literature (e.g., Cook &
Schirmer, 2006; Odom et al., 2005), a great deal of
uncertainty remains about which educational practices
are evidence based and how EBPs are identified. It is
important for teachers, administrators, parents, policy
makers, teacher educators, and other educational stake-
holders to understand why and how a practice comes to
be considered evidence based. In particular, without
understanding some fundamental aspects of experimen-
tal research design, educators cannot (a) examine
the research literature and reliably determine which
instructional practices are most likely to be effective or
(b) understand the basis on which practices are or are
not determined to be evidence based by researchers.
Similar to single-subject research (see Tankersley,
Harjusola-Webb, & Landrum, 2008 [this issue]), group
experimental research is designed to definitively
demonstrate whether an intervention causes change in
student outcomes and is an EBP.
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Cook et al. / Group Experimental Research 77
Group Experimental Research
The two hallmarks of group experimental research are
(a) using a control or comparison group, with which the
outcomes of those receiving a particular treatment
are compared, and (b) actively initiating the treatment or
independent variable. Although multiple types of experi-
mental and quasi-experimental designs exist (Campbell &
Stanley, 1963), for the sake of brevity and clarity, we focus
on what Campbell and Stanley (1963) referred to as the
pretest–posttest control group design and the nonequiva-
lent control group design. In these designs, one group of
participants (the experimental group) receives the inter-
vention being tested, while another group (the control
group) is taught as usual, without the intervention.
Researchers measure student outcomes (e.g., reading per-
formance) in both of these designs before (pretest) and
after (posttest) the intervention is introduced to the exper-
imental group. In well-designed group experimental
research, if meaningful differences in outcomes are
observed between those who did and those who did not
receive an intervention, assuming the research is otherwise
sound, research consumers can conclude that the interven-
tion caused the difference in group outcomes. With the
exception of single-subject research, which is often con-
sidered a type of experimental research (Creswell, 2005;
Rumrill & Cook, 2001), no other research design allows
consumers to infer such cause-and-effect relationships
from research findings (e.g., if Intervention X is imple-
mented, increased student performance results).
Control Groups
In determining whether an intervention is effective,
researchers must do more than show that student per-
formance improved after an intervention was imple-
mented. Without a comparable control group (also
referred to as a comparison group) that does not receive
the intervention, one cannot be sure that it was the
intervention that produced or caused any change in out-
comes that may be observed. For example, suppose that
a group of 20 fourth grade students with learning dis-
abilities (LD) began participating in classwide peer
tutoring ([CWPT] Greenwood, Maheady, & Delquadri,
2002) in reading for 20 minutes a day, in addition to 40
minutes of typical reading instruction they already
received from their resource room teacher. Before the
intervention began, a pretest indicated that these
students read correctly, on average, 90 words per
minute on grade-level passages. After 10 weeks, the
students read an average of 125 words correctly per
78 Intervention in School and Clinic
minute on similar grade-level passages. At first glance,
it is tempting to conclude that the intervention was
effective and caused the increase in reading perfor-
mance. However, without a meaningful control group,
one has no way of knowing whether these students
would have improved just as much without the inter-
vention being implemented. It is possible that typical
instruction would have produced the same gains or that
some other variable (e.g., the school started a new
breakfast program that improved students’ nutrition) is
responsible for the increase in performance.
In group experimental designs, a comparison group
that does not receive the intervention is used to evaluate
the impact of the intervention. For example, assume that
the researchers in the above example also measured the
reading performance of 20 additional fourth grade
students with LD in the same school who did not receive
CWPT but instead received typical reading instruction
from the same resource room teacher for 60 minutes per
day. Assume that the mean number of words read cor-
rectly per minute improved among students in the con-
trol group from 92 to 110 over the semester. The
researchers now use statistical tests to compare the two
groups, addressing the question of whether a gain from
a mean of 90 to 125 (observed for the experimental
group) meaningfully exceeds a gain from a mean of 92
to 110 (observed for the control group).
By using a control group that shared many characteris-
tics with the experimental group (e.g., a new principal’s
high expectations, the amount of time receiving reading
instruction, grade level, the disability status of students),
the researchers eliminated many alternative explanations
for the greater performance gains observed in the experi-
mental group. For example, neither the new principal’s
high expectations nor the amount of time devoted to read-
ing could have caused the larger gains in the experimen-
tal group, because both groups had the same new
principal and worked on reading for 1 hour per day. When
the control and experimental groups are equivalent in
regard to a variable, the researchers have controlled or
accounted for that variable, meaning that it cannot have
caused any outcome difference between the two groups.
When experimental and control groups are highly similar,
researchers have controlled for a large number of vari-
ables. This similarity among groups increases one’s con-
fidence that the one variable on which researchers made
sure the groups differed—the independent variable, in
this case CWPT—was responsible for the difference in
outcomes between the two groups.
True experiments. The nature of the control group is a
critical aspect of group experimental research. If, in the
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previous example, most of the students who received the
intervention had, for instance, better nutrition or more
support at home than students in the control group, the
difference in reading performance might be due to these
factors rather than the implementation of CWPT. The
more similar the comparison and experimental groups
are, the more confidence one has that any differences in
outcomes between the groups are caused by the inter-
vention. In true experiments, participants are randomly
assigned to either the experimental (those receiving the
intervention) or the control (those not receiving the inter-
vention) group. Random assignment does not guarantee
that the groups will be identical (e.g., by chance, students
with greater support at home could be disproportionately
placed in the control group). However, it does eliminate
the possibility of any systematic bias being introduced
by the researchers and, especially when a study involves
a large number of participants, makes it highly likely that
groups will be functionally equivalent in every possible
way with the exception of the treatment variable being
examined (Creswell, 2005; Rumrill & Cook, 2001).
If the groups are functionally equivalent in every possi-
ble way except the presence of the intervention, any
differences in outcomes are logically caused by the inter-
vention, the one variable on which the groups differ.
Researchers can use methods beyond random assign-
ment to groups to heighten the likelihood that members
in the control and experimental groups are functionally
equivalent, such as blocking and matching (Creswell,
2005). These methods are particularly appropriate in
studies with relatively small numbers of participants,
because random assignment is less likely to produce
functionally equivalent groups in these situations. In
blocking, researchers make sure that the same numbers
of participants from each level of a variable or variables
of interest are represented in the control and experimen-
tal groups. For example, if the researchers in the previ-
ous example wanted to ensure that both groups were
similar in terms of IQ, they could group students into
three levels: below 100, 100 to 115, and above 115. They
then would randomly assign an equal number of students
from each group to the control and experimental groups,
thus ensuring that that students at any level of IQ are not
overrepresented in one group. Matching provides an
even more rigorous method for enhancing the compara-
bility of groups. In this method, researchers rank all par-
ticipants on a variable of interest (e.g., IQ) and pair
participants according to rank (i.e., students with the
highest and second highest IQ scores are paired, those
with the third and fourth highest IQs are paired, and so
forth). Researchers then randomly assign one participant
from each pair to the two groups, thereby ensuring that

the control and experimental groups are functionally
equivalent on the matched variable.
Quasi-experiments. True experiments in which par-
ticipants are randomly assigned to groups are often
impractical. For example, it is often difficult, unethical,
or both to randomly assign half of the students in a class
to receive an intervention that their classmates do not.
Rather than randomly assigning participants to groups,
quasi-experimental studies involve researchers using
pre-existing or intact groups (Creswell, 2005; Rumrill &
Cook, 2001). For example, a researcher might train the
fourth grade teachers at one school to use CWPT and
compare their outcomes after a semester of implementa-
tion with those of fourth grade students at another
school that does not use CWPT. Assume that on aver-
age, students in the school using CWPT increased their
words read correctly per minute on a grade-level pas-
sage by 35, whereas the control group increased by only
18. To the degree that the experimental and control
groups are functionally equivalent, research consumers
can conclude that CWPT is effective and is responsible
for the differences in the groups’ outcomes.
However, a quasi-experimental study can provide
only tentative support for the claim that CWPT caused
the superior performance increase in the intervention
group. Because of nonrandom assignment, the control
and experimental groups may vary in a number of rele-
vant ways that researchers were unable to control, intro-
ducing a host of alternative explanations for why
outcomes improved more in the experimental group
(Creswell, 2005; Rumrill & Cook, 2001). Among an
almost endless variety of potential differences, it is pos-
sible that the teachers were more experienced at one
school, that one school had smaller classes, or that the
students in one school had received better instruction in
reading in previous years.
Researchers can improve the soundness of quasi-
experimental studies by measuring characteristics
related to the target outcome(s) (e.g., previous student
achievement, teacher experience) and demonstrating
that the control and experimental groups are function-
ally similar. If the groups are found to differ on one or
more variables, researchers can statistically control for
such differences in data analysis. However, when partic-
ipants are not randomly assigned to groups, the groups
may vary along more dimensions than researchers can
reasonably measure and control for with statistical tech-
niques. Because of the inherent limitations associated
with not randomly assigning participants to groups, the
credibility of findings from quasi-experiments is a
subject of debate (Gersten, Baker, & Lloyd, 2000).
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Cook et al. / Group Experimental Research 79
Gersten et al. recommended that educators consider
findings from quasi-experimental research as providing
meaningful support for the effectiveness of an instruc-
tional practice when several pretest measures show the
experimental and control groups to be comparable (i.e.,
the groups differ by 0.50 standard deviations or less on
each measure), and even then, results should be inter-
preted with considerable caution.
Active Manipulation of a Treatment
Variable
In combination with using a comparison group, group
experimental research must involve active manipulation
of the intervention (i.e., systematically introducing the
intervention and/or removing it from instructional prac-
tice) to determine whether an instructional practice
causes improved student outcomes. In nonexperimental
research, researchers often observe and compare out-
comes as they naturally occur. For example, assume that
researchers wanted to examine the impact of teacher
praise on the on-task behavior of students with emotional
and behavior disorders. The researchers observed the fre-
quency of teacher praise for 30 elementary teachers of
students with emotional and behavior disorders through-
out the semester, as well as the on-task behavior of their
students. The researchers then grouped the teachers into
high-praise and low-praise groups of 15 teachers each.
After statistically controlling for relevant differences
between the groups (e.g., teacher experience, student aca-
demic performance), the researchers find that students
attending the classrooms of the high-praise teachers were
more frequently on task than the students of the low-
praise teachers. Although it is tempting to conclude that
greater teacher praise caused high levels of on-task
behavior, because the researchers did not actively intro-
duce the intervention, one cannot draw clear conclusions
regarding the direction of the relationship. That is, it is
quite possible that students’ on-task behavior caused
teachers’ high levels of praise, rather than teacher praise
causing students to be on-task more frequently.
In experimental research, the direction of a cause-and-
effect relationship is established in part because of the
chronology of events. In the example regarding the rela-
tion between teacher praise and students’ on-task behav-
ior, it is not possible to determine which variable occurred
first, or whether one caused the other. When researchers
introduce an instructional practice that was not previously
used, however, the direction of the relationship is easier to
infer. Suppose in the example of teacher praise that
researchers observe that two classrooms are functionally
equivalent, including equally low rates of teacher praise.
80 Intervention in School and Clinic
By providing training to one teacher in regularly deliver-
ing praise for on-task behavior and measuring the
teacher’s frequent praise to students, the researchers then
introduce teacher praise at a high level into only one of
the classrooms. The other classroom, in which the
teacher’s rate of praise was not changed systematically,
serves as the control. If students’ on-task behavior is
observed to increase in the classroom in which praise was
implemented, but not in the low-praise classroom, it is
reasonable to conclude not only that praise and student
behavior are related, but that there is some directionality
to this relationship. Because the researchers actively
introduced, or manipulated, the higher rate of teacher
praise before an observed increase in students’ on-task
behavior occurred, change in student behavior could not
have caused the higher levels of teacher praise in the
experimental group. Rather, all else being equal between
the two groups, increased teacher praise logically must
have caused the differential increase in student on-task
behavior observed in the experimental group. Thus, using
an equivalent comparison group and actively manipulat-
ing a treatment variable work together to enable
researchers to determine whether an instructional practice
causes change in student outcomes.
Examples of Group Experimental Research
in Special Education
True experimental research. Xin, Jitendra, and
Deatline-Buchman (2005) investigated the efficacy of
schema-based instruction (SBI), an instructional prac-
tice for problem solving in math, for middle school
students who were at risk for math failure. Xin et al. ran-
domly assigned 11 students to the SBI group and 11 to
a general strategy instruction (GSI) group, which served
as a control group. The authors demonstrated that ran-
dom assignment resulted in similar composition of the
experimental and control groups on such variables as
gender (6 girls in the SBI group and 5 in the GSI group),
age (respective means of 153.8 and 156.7 months), and
intelligence (mean standard scores of 92 for both
groups). Students in the GSI group received instruction
for mathematical problem solving in which they were
taught to use four steps: (a) read to understand, (b) draw
a picture to represent the problem, (c) solve the prob-
lem, and (d) look back and check. The SBI group
received instruction in identifying the type of problem
presented and using schematic diagrams corresponding
to the problem type to solve the problem. The SBI group
used the following procedure for mathematical problem
solving that incorporated the use of schematic diagrams:
(a) read to understand, (b) identify the problem type
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and use the schema diagram to represent the problem,
(c) transform the diagram into a math sentence and
solve the problem, and (d) look back and check.
Xin et al. (2005) used 32-item tests composed of mul-
tiplication and division word problems to assess partici-
pants’ performance in math problem solving. The
researchers implemented the SBI and GSI interventions
through 12 one-hour training sessions after giving a
pretest to all participants and before assessing the effects
of the interventions on a posttest. Given the random
assignment of participants to groups, it is not surprising
that the mean performance of the two groups did not dif-
fer significantly on the pretest (GSI group M = 29.85, SBI
group M = 25.19). However, the SBI group performed
significantly higher than the control group at posttest
(e.g., GSI posttest M = 47.55, SBI group M = 79.41). A
significant difference between groups also was observed
on assessments administered 1 to 2 weeks after the inter-
ventions were completed (i.e., maintenance) and 3 weeks
to 3 months after the conclusion of instruction (i.e., fol-
low-up). Because Xin et al. (a) randomly assigned partic-
ipants to groups, which were demonstrated to be
functionally equivalent except for the differences in prob-
lem-solving instruction, and (b) introduced the instruc-
tional practice between pre- and posttesting, one can have
considerable confidence that SBI caused meaningful
gains in performance on multiplication and division word
problems beyond those produced by GSI.
Quasi-experimental research. Using a quasi-experimen-
tal design, Woodward and Brown (2006) also investigated
the effectiveness of an instructional practice for middle
school students at risk for failure in mathematics.
Participating students had been identified for intense,
remedial instruction in mathematics at two middle schools,
both of which were lower-middle-class, suburban schools.
Thirty-nine of the 53 participating students were identified
with LD. Researchers assigned the 25 at-risk students at
one school to the experimental group and the 28 students
at-risk for math failure in the other school to the control
group. The researchers documented the similarity of the
groups in these areas: number of students with LD (25 in
the experimental group, 14 in the control group), mean
score on a math test (12.36 in the experimental group,
13.36 in the control group), score on a math attitudinal sur-
vey (50.92 in the experimental group, 53.32 in the control
group), and gender (11 girls and 14 boys in the experimen-
tal group, 15 girls and 13 boys in the control group).
Students in the experimental group received instruc-
tion in math for 55 minutes a day using a curriculum
emphasizing conceptual understanding that was
designed and empirically validated for students at risk

for mathematics failure, provided extended opportuni-
ties for problem solving and whole-class discussion,
made explicit connections between topics, and incorpo-
rated visual models. The control group used a traditional
curriculum that also emphasized problem solving and
group work during the 85 minutes of daily work in
math. This time included 25 minutes devoted to com-
pleting worksheets on math facts. The researchers
implemented the interventions subsequent to assessing
participants’ math performance on the sixth grade por-
tion of a reliable mathematics test as well as their atti-
tudes toward math on a 20-item survey in late October
(e.g., pretest). Researchers administered a posttest using
the same instruments near the end of the school year.
Woodward and Brown (2006) reported that there were
no significant differences between the groups at pretest
for either measure. However, the experimental group
scored significantly higher than the control group at
posttest on both measures (i.e., 17.88 vs. 15.11 on the
math test and 65.36 vs. 51.86 on the attitudinal mea-
sure). Given the similarity of the groups before
researchers introduced the different curricula, it appears
likely that the empirically validated mathematics cur-
riculum caused the superior performance and attitudinal
gains of the experimental group. However, as with any
quasi-experimental study, because of the nonrandom
assignment of participants to conditions, readers must
be cautious in interpreting the study’s findings.
Unmeasured differences in student, teacher, or environ-
mental characteristics might have existed between the
groups that affected the findings.
Discussion
Most teachers rely on a number of factors when
deciding what and how to teach. For example, teachers
may consider their comfort levels with the technique,
the compatibility of an intervention with their students
and their teaching styles, and input from colleagues and
mentors. These are important considerations, yet the
primary concern of teachers, especially special educa-
tion teachers, when selecting a teaching technique
should be the effectiveness of the practice, or the degree
to which it has the potential to cause desired changes in
student outcomes. Although all types of research pro-
vide useful information, experimental research is the
only type that addresses the question of whether an
intervention causes change in student outcomes.
Nonexperimental research studies do not involve mean-
ingful comparison groups or conditions that did not
receive treatments that were actively introduced by the
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Cook et al. / Group Experimental Research 81
TABLE 1
Considerations Regarding Experimental and Quasi-
Experimental Research
• Although all types of research provide important information, group
experimental research is one of the only research designs (in addition to
single-subject research) that can meaningfully determine evidence-based
practices in special education.
• Causal inferences (e.g., Intervention X causes improved reading perfor-
mance among adolescents with learning disabilities) can be drawn from
true experimental research, because it involves (a) using a comparison of
functionally equivalent groups and (b) actively introducing the interven-
tion after a pretest and before a posttest measurement of student outcomes.
• True experiments involve randomly assigning participants to a control
group and a treatment group to achieve functional equivalence of groups.
• Because intact groups, which may differ in meaningful ways besides the
presence of the treatment, are compared in quasi-experimental research,
considerable caution should be exercised when interpreting the findings of
these research studies.
• Readers can be more confident in the results of quasi-experimental
studies to the extent that control and treatment groups are shown to be func-
tionally equivalent (except with regard to the presence of the treatment).
researchers. These characteristics are present in group
experimental research and allow research consumers to
conclude that the treatment caused changes in student
outcomes. See Table 1 for a summary of considerations
related to group experimental research.
Teachers, administrators, teacher educators, and pol-
icy makers should, when such research is available, rely
primarily, if not exclusively, on experimental studies to
determine which practices really work and should be the
focus of teacher preparation and classroom instruction.
Generally, people are more likely to trust ideas that they
understand. Toward that end, we have endeavored to pro-
vide a basic understanding of the role of group experi-
mental research in determining the effectiveness of
educational interventions. However, it should not be the
responsibility of teachers to sift through research jour-
nals and interpret experimental research (Cook et al.,
2003). Teachers simply have to too much to do already
and typically do not have advanced training in statistics
and research necessary to critically interpret the variety
of studies they may encounter. It is, then, the responsi-
bility of teacher educators, professional organizations, or
both to (a) develop a systematic, transparent process
for determining which practices are evidence based and
(b) disseminate and promote those practices deemed evi-
dence based. Because experimental studies (i.e., group
experiments and single-subject research) are the only
type of research from which definitive conclusions
regarding whether an intervention actually works can be
drawn, sensible proposals to determine EBPs will feature
group experimental research prominently (Gersten et al.,
2005).
82 Intervention in School and Clinic
About the Authors
Lysandra Cook, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Special
Education at the University of Hawaii. Her current interests include the
recruitment and retention of special education teachers, evidenced-based
practices, and inclusion. Bryan G. Cook, PhD, is a professor of special edu-
cation and the Hubert Everly Scholar at the University of Hawaii. His current
interests include evidence-based practices in special education, inclusion, and
postsecondary education for individuals with disabilities. Timothy J.
Landrum, PhD, is an associate professor on the general faculty and senior
scientist in the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. His
research and writing focus on classroom and behavior management, the iden-
tification of evidence-based practices in special education, and the translation
of research into practice. Melody Tankersley, PhD, is a professor of special
education at Kent State University. Her current scholarship interests are
related to preventing emotional and behavioral disorders, promoting positive
classroom behavior, and bringing research to bear on practice. Address:
Lysandra Cook, University of Hawaii, Department of Special Education,
Wist Hall 116, 1776 University Avenue, Honolulu, HI 96822; e-mail: lhcook@
hawaii.edu.
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