Is Educational Intervention Research on the Decline?

Abstract

The majority of studies included adults (age 18 and older) as participants, administered brief (less than 1 day) interventions, assessed intervention effects immediately following the intervention, and did not report treatment integrity. Most studies included multiple outcome measures and exhibited an increase in effect-size reporting from 4% in 1995 to 61% in 2004. The percentage of total articles based on randomized experiments decreased over the 21-year period in both the educational psychology journals (from 40% in 1983 to 34% in 1995 to 26% in 2004) and AERJ (from 33% to 17% to 4%). Limitations of the study and future research issues are discussed.

Future Directions for Theory and Research with Instructional Manipulatives:Commentary on the Special Issue Papers

“…A review of educational psychology research found that less than 5 % of studies published in peer-reviewed journals accounted for time spent learning and time between learning and outcome measurement as factors (Hsieh et al 2005), indicating that the majority of educational psychology research is performed in abbreviated periods of time, usually less than 1 day. As discussed by Pouw, van Gog and Paas, embodied theories propose cognition consists of mental simulations that are grounded in sensorimotor experience.…”

Yes…But: Footnotes To Sage Advice

“…Thus, collaboration even with one's doctoral students would reduce perceptions of productivity in those cases. This was one of the reasons that Hsieh et al (2005) conducted their re-examination of scholarly productivity data previously reported by Smith and colleagues.…”

“…Specifically, as Hsieh et al (2005) argued, higher ratings for productivity in previous studies (e.g., Smith et al 1998Smith et al , 2003 were awarded when the faculty solo-authored, had few co-authors and had high author placement in those publications than when they shared authorship. Thus, collaboration even with one's doctoral students would reduce perceptions of productivity in those cases.…”

The Not-So-Quiet Revolution: Cautionary Comments on the Rejection of Hypothesis Testing in Favor of a “Causal” Modeling Alternative

“…In one journal survey (Hsieh et al, 2005), the proportion of articles based on intervention and experimental (random assignment) methodology had decreased from 47% in 1983 to 23% in 2004.…”