DOI: 10.3886/icpsr36738.v1
title: Sit Together and Read in Early Childhood Special Education Classrooms in Ohio (2008-2012)
title: Version 1

description: The Sit Together and Read in Early Childhood Special Education Classrooms in Ohio (2008-2012) study was a randomized controlled trial conducted between 2008-2012 that examined the efficacy of a print-referencing intervention designed to improve the pre-reading skills of preschool-aged children in early childhood special education classrooms with primary language impairments, both in the short-term (within the preschool year) and long-term (through kindergarten entry).
Children's participation in the project spanned a nearly two-year period, to include three assessment time-points (T1, T2, T3) and exposure to their teachers' assigned study condition between T1 and T2. T1 and T2 correspond to the fall and spring of an academic year and T3 occurred at 12 months post-T2, in the spring of the next academic year when children were either in preschool for a second years or had matriculated into kindergarten.
Datasets 1 and 2, Child Direct Measures and Child Indirect Measures, includes basic demographic information gathered from the Child Screening Questionnaire,  regarding the child and their caregivers, as well as information about the child's speech and language problems, disabilities, or special services they receive. Additionally direct and indirect measures, scales, and testing information are included in the respective datasets. Information obtained from the Caregiver Questionnaire is included in Dataset 2, Child Indirect Measures.
Dataset 3, Teacher Demographic Questionnaire, includes basic demographic, information on teachers' education, majors, years of experience working with children, and state-level certifications. Also included is information on district-level workshops or in-service training during the last academic year that addresses learning and behavior difficulties. Finally, the teachers provided the type and name of the curriculums they used in their classrooms.
description: This study aims to examine the efficacy of a print-referencing intervention designed to improve the pre-reading skills of preschool-aged children with primary language impairments, both in the short-term (within the preschool year) and long-term (through kindergarten entry).
description: The children's teachers and caregivers engaged in parallel implementation of a 30-week book-reading intervention; teachers implemented the intervention in their classrooms, whereas caregivers implemented the intervention in their homes. Teachers were ascertained into the study first and then the children's caregivers were invited to participate. Of those children whose caregivers provided consent, teachers then completed a Child Screening Questionnaire, comprising of eight questions designed to differentiate children with language impairments from children in early childhood special education classrooms as typical peers and those children with disabilities in which their language skills are unaffected (e.g., emotional and behavioral problems).
description: No weight variables are present in this collection.
description: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of 
				disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major 
				statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to 
				these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:
			   		Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Presence of Common Scales: 
					Please see the Star 2 Measures Tables Documentation for further information on scales and their use in the data collection.
description: Response Rates: 
					In the randomized control trial, teachers were ascertained into the study first; caregivers of children in their classrooms were then invited to participate, the majority of whom did - 85% average enrollment across the classrooms.
description: Datasets: 
					
						DS0: Study-Level Files
						DS1: Child Direct Measures
						DS2: Child Indirect Measures
						DS3: Teacher Demographic Questions
description: cognitive assessment test, on-site questionnaire
					
										For additional information on the Sit Together and Read Study, please visit the Sit Together and Read - Ohio Web site.
description: Early childhood special education classrooms in Ohio.
				   		Smallest Geographic Unit: None
description: Random assignment occurred at the level of the classroom/teacher: each was assigned to one of three study conditions based on the type of read-aloud program to be implemented by the early childhood special education classroom teacher and children's home caregivers: (a) regular reading/regular reading (RR/RR), (b) print-focused/regular reading (PF/RR), or (c) print-focused/print-focused (PF/PF). Within each condition, teachers and caregivers implemented a 30-week read-aloud program in which they read an assigned storybook four (teachers) or two times (caregivers) per week. Teachers read the book as a whole-group classroom book reading. Each caregiver read the assigned books in the participant's home. Caregivers received the same 30 titles as their children's teachers and followed generally the same schedule of reading.
Teachers and caregivers assigned to the RR condition (in the RR/RR and PF/RR conditions) read the project storybooks on the schedule provided (120 sessions for teachers, 60 for caregivers) and were asked to read the storybooks using their normal reading style. Teachers and caregivers assigned to the PF condition (in the PF/RR and PF/PF conditions) read the project storybooks on the schedule provided but implemented a print-focused read-aloud program that targeted 15 print-related objectives over the 30-week period. Teachers and caregivers were provided an insert with each storybook that provided a semi-scripted instructional sequence to follow. The inserts provided specific objectives to be addressed in a given week (e.g., to understand the concept of left-to-right directionality of print) and how the targeted object could be addressed within the specific context of the assigned storybook being read. Please see the Star 2 Study Summary and Methods Documentation for further information.