ALT Blog Post Reading Interventions for Students With or at Risk for Dyslexia: What Does the Research Say? Hall et al. (2023) conducted a meta-analysis to estimate the mean effect of reading interventions that include instruction in foundational skills on reading outcomes for elementary students with or at risk for dyslexia. The researchers also examined whether student, intervention, outcome, and study characteristics helped explain differences in intervention effects.

ALT What Did the Researchers Find? Results indicated that the interventions had a positive effect on students’ reading outcomes. However, the size of the effects varied across studies. The researchers looked at several factors that might explain those differences, such as student characteristics, intervention characteristics, the type of reading skill being measured, and how the studies were conducted. Two factors mattered: 1. The amount of instruction students received Students who received more instruction tended to show greater improvements. Importantly, however, the findings do not indicate that simply increasing instructional time will automatically produce better outcomes; dosage was examined across studies alongside other characteristics of the interventions.

ALT 2. The reading skill being measured The interventions also had larger effects on word reading and spelling outcomes than on reading comprehension outcomes. In addition, interventions that included spelling instruction alongside word reading instruction were more effective than those that did not include a spelling component. The researchers also found insufficient evidence that programs labeled as multisensory are more effective than other evidence-based reading approaches that are not described as multisensory.