Standardized Testing Students With ADHD

Standardized Testing -- Students with ADHD The first study in an article in the Journal of Learning Disabilities by Frazier, et al. (2007) looks at the published literature (studies) since 1990 in order to produce a meta-analysis that will show the "…magnitude of achievement problems" that confront individuals with attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD). In other words, the purpose was to find out exactly what problems ADHD sufferers encounter when trying to achieve knowledge.

In order to ascertain the difficulties -- and to help ADHD students become more academically competent -- that present roadblocks for those individuals, the first study looks at existing literature and uses "…quantitative, meta-analytic procedures" as a research design in order to thoroughly interpret the results in previous work (Frazier). The first research section examined 72 studies (the ones that fulfilled all appropriate criteria); 54 studies involved children; 7 involved adolescents; 4 looked at college students and 7 evaluated adults (Frazier).

The research showed that children with ADHD scored lower than adolescents and adolescents in turn scored lower than adults with ADHD (Frazier). The second study examined the ADHD problems 380 first-year college students with ADHD encounter through their studies; the students were from 18 colleges / universities on the East Coast of the U.S. Confidential questionnaires were given to these students and parents of the students; logical regression was used as a research design.

The outcome showed what might be surmised by researchers and that is, ADHD symptoms are "…significantly associated with problems in academic functioning" for college students (Frazier). The outcome shows Frazier and colleagues that "routine screening of college students for ADHD" might be helpful in terms of avoiding "academic failure" that is associated with ADHD.

The results showed that students with ADHD can more readily check errors in their work if math and spelling are involved; but when reading and writing skills are challenged, students with ADHD are not as quick to be aware of their errors. Analysis of the Article In the meta-analysis study there were a number of different sizes of investigative research projects; so the authors simply averaged "…across measures…" like reading scores, spelling scores and math results in order to get a "single effect size," which seems less than absolute.

It also seems questionable that notwithstanding some studies involved college students and others involved only adults (some well beyond college aged individuals), both of those age groups "…were collapsed into a single group labeled adults" (Frazier). It is also interesting that the larger the samples (whether heterogeneous or epidemiological), the greater the effect on ADHD sufferers; and the smaller the sample (that zeroed in on clinical, empirical research), the smaller the effect of ADHD (Frazier). This seems like a possible flaw in the method.

Another threat to the validity of the findings is that the researchers did not "…exclude individuals with comorbid LD" (Frazier). As to the second study, it is impressive that researchers went to the trouble to use questionnaires for both the ADHD student and that student's parents. This is a wise approach because self-reporting from college students has been known to be skewed because students sometimes report what they perceive that researchers want to hear, not necessarily the true facts.

A question has to be raised vis-a-vis this study as to why there were 253 female.