DOI: 10.3886/icpsr27421
title: The National Early Literacy Panel (NELP), 2002-2006
title: Archival Version

description: The National Early Literacy Panel (NELP) was convened in 2002 to conduct a synthesis of the scientific research on the development of early literacy skills in children ages zero to five. NELP met on 12 occasions between April 2002- February 2006. NELP's primary goal was to identify interventions, parenting activities, and instructional practices that promote the development of children's early literacy skills. Toward that end, the panel posed the following four questions: What are the skills and abilities of young children (age birth through five years or kindergarten) that predict later reading, writing, or spelling outcome? Which programs, interventions, and other instructional approaches or procedures have contributed to or inhibited gains in children's skills and abilities that are linked to later outcomes in reading, writing, or spelling? What environments and settings have contributed to or inhibited gains in children's skills and abilities that are linked to later outcomes in reading, writing, or spelling? What child characteristics have contributed to or inhibited gains in children's skills and abilities that are linked to later outcomes in reading, writing, or spelling? NELP adopted a methodology that allowed for the identification and selection of published studies relevant to the panel's questions, a coding system that allowed for the combination and comparison of studies, and an appropriate method of statistical analysis. Approximately 500 research articles were used in the meta-analyses conducted by the panel. The meta-analyses summarized both correlational data showing the relationships between children's early abilities and skills and later literacy development and experimental data that showed the impact of instructional interventions on children's learning.
description: The mode of data collection was a systematic empirical study in which data were collected, analyzed, and evaluated in an objective and systematic way to determine answers to specified research questions. In that sense, a research synthesis is an independent research study in its own right that uses existing studies as the data for its analysis. As independent research studies, research syntheses include selection criteria for identification of relevant research, standards for judging the quality of research, operational definitions, and replicability of methods.
description: Electronic searches were conducted using PsycINFO and the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), and these were supplemented with hand searches of major research journals, reference checks of past literature reviews, and nominations from leading experts in the field of early literacy. These search procedures yielded more than 8,000 potential articles that were screened to determine their relevance to the research questions and their consistency with all selection criteria established by the panel. This led to the identification of approximately 500 research articles that were used in the meta-analyses conducted by the panel.
description: Datasets: DS1: The National Early Literacy Panel (NELP), 2002-2006
description: Electronic searches were conducted using PsycINFO and the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), and these were supplemented with hand searches of major research journals, reference checks of past literature reviews, and nominations from leading experts in the field of early literacy.
description: record abstractsThe panelists for NELP include: <strong>Chair: Timothy Shanahan</strong>-Professor of Urban Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago Director, UIC Center for Literacy <strong>Anne Cunningham</strong>-Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education and Director of the Joint Doctoral Program in Special Education at the University of California Berkeley <strong>Kathy C. Escamilla</strong>-Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Colorado and affiliated with the BUENO Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Colorado <strong>Janet Fischel</strong>-Professor of Pediatrics and Psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and Director of Pediatric Medical Evaluation, Director of the Division of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, Director of the Stony Brook Reading and Language Laboratory, and Associate Director of the Pediatric Residency Training Program <strong>Susan Landry</strong>-Michael Matthew Knight Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and Chief of the Division of Developmental Pediatrics and the Director of the Center for Improving the Readiness of Children for Learning and Education (CIRCLE) in the Department of Pediatrics <strong>Christopher J. Lonigan</strong>-Professor in the Department of Psychology at Florida State University and Associate Director of the Florida Center for Reading Research <strong>Victoria J. Molfese</strong>-Professor and Ashland-Nystrand Chair at the University of Louisville and Director of the University's Early Childhood Research Center <strong>Chris Schatschneider</strong>-Professor of Psychology at Florida State University and Associate Director of the Florida Center for Reading Research <strong>Dorothy Strickland</strong>-Professor of Reading and Samuel DeWitt Proctor Professor of Education at Rutgers UniversityThe articles used in NELP cannot be made directly available due to copyright.