JCPSLP
Volume 16, Number 2 2014
61
improvement over time. There was no interaction effect for
Time x Class on RAPT-G (
p
= .746) or RAPT-I (
p
= .629),
indicating all classes made similar significant progress in
their ability to produce grammatical utterances containing
relevant information in response to 10 picture prompts.
•
Boehm-3: there was a significant effect for time (
p
< .001),
indicating a significant improvement for all students.
There was a significant effect for Time x Class F(2,50) =
73.27,
p
= .008. As displayed in Figure 1, PC2 and PC3
made significantly more progress than PC1. There were
no ceiling effects for PC1. When inspecting the standard
scores, however, it was found that 60% of the children in
PC2 and 67% of the students in PC3 still scored below
the 25th percentile. Only 15% of the students in PC1
scored < 25th percentile.
•
SPAT-R: change in performance was determined
for PC2 and PC3 (only post-intervention results are
available for PC1). Using a RM (Class x Time) ANOVA,
both classes showed a significant improvement in
phonological awareness; however, PC3 showed a
significantly greater improvement on the SPAT-R than
PC2 F(1,40) = 5.541,
p
= .024), with a medium effect
size (
N
2 =.122), indicating this difference would be
noticeable in clinical practice (Portney & Watkins, 2000).
Story retelling and comprehension
performance post-intervention
The story comprehension and retelling task was only
administered at the end of the year, following intervention.
As displayed in Table 3, PC1 significantly outperformed the
students in PC2 and PC3 on all measures, except the
number of utterances used to retell the story. There were no
group differences between PC2 and PC3.
sensitive progress measure. Where appropriate
N
2 (eta
squared) values were calculated as an estimate of the effect
size (Vacha-Haase & Thompson, 2004).
Results
Comparison of the three classes pre-
intervention
Analyses of Variance (ANOVA), with post-hoc analyses
(Bonferroni), were used to investigate class differences
pre-intervention. As shown in Table 3, PC1 outperformed
PC2 and PC3 on all measures (i.e., RAPT-G, RAPT-I, Letter
ID, and Boehm-3) (
p
< .05) prior to the intervention. There
were no differences in performance on any of the measures
between PC2 and PC3 (
p
> .05).
Change in performance following
intervention
We investigated the change in performance within and
between the three prep classes to determine (a) if the
students made significant progress, and (b) if there were
differences between the intervention class and the two
control classes. The following measures were analysed
pre- and post-intervention: Letter identification, RAPT-G,
RAPT-I, and the Boehm-3 (see Table 3 and Figure 1). Using
repeated measures (RM) ANOVAs with post-hoc analyses
(Bonferroni), the following results were found:
•
Letter ID: There was a significant effect for time (
p
< .001),
but no interaction effect for Time x Class (
p
= .068).
These results indicate all classes made significant, but
similar progress in letter identification.
•
RAPT-G and RAPT-I: there was a significant effect for time
on both measures (
p
<.001) indicating a significant
Table 3. Group performance (with SD) pre- and post-intervention by prep class
Measures
Prep Class 1 (PC1)
Pre
Post
Prep Class 2 (PC2)
Business as usual
Pre
Post
Prep Class 3 (PC3)
Intervention
Pre
Post
RAPT-G*
15.4 (4.7)
25.6 (3.2)
11.7 (4.3)
21.7 (3.7)
7.9 (5.6)
18.5 (6.5)
RAPT-I#
25.4 (5.1)
34.6 (2.4)
20.7 (6.3)
31.5 (4)
19.5 (7.2)
29.3 (4.6)
SPAT-R*
31 (6.8)
12.1 (6.9)
20.3 (7.3)
9.7 (5.8)
22.1 (6.6)
Letter ID*
33 (19)
49 (5)
4.3 (5.1)
34 (21.4)
6.7 (15.2)
37.1 (14)
Boehm*
33 (7.2)
43.3 (3.8)
22 (7.5)
37.1 (6.4)
19 (7.6)
35.3 (6.6)
SQ*
25 (5.7)
20 (5.8)
18.7 (6.7)
SC*
5.9 (1.5)
4.3 (1.6)
4.5 (1.6)
UTT@
11.6 (4)
9.1 (5.1)
8.7 (4.4)
NDW*
45 (14)
32 (17)
30 (15)
GA*
82 (14)
66 (21)
60.9 (20.9)
MLU-M*
7.6 (1.2)
6.6 (1.3)
6.2 (1.3)
Note:
RAPT: Renfrew Action Picture Test (Renfrew, 2010), Grammar and Information subtests; SPAT-R: Sutherland Phonological Awareness
Test – Revised (Neilson, 2003). Boehm-3: Boehm Test of Basic Concepts – 3 (Boehm, 2001); SQ = story quality (max score: 40); SC = story
comprehension (max score: 8); UTT = number of utterances used to retell the story; NDW = number of different words; GA = grammatical
accuracy in percent grammatically accurate utterances; MLU-M = mean length of utterance in morphemes.
* PC1 performed significantly better (p < .05) than PC2 or PC3. No significant differences between PC2 and PC3.
# Pre-intervention PC1 performed significantly better than PC2 and PC3. There were no significant differences between PC2 and PC3.
Post-intervention PC1 performed better than PC3. There were no significant differences between PC1 and PC2.
@ There were no differences between the groups on this measure (p = .102).
