Social or Context Effects

Much of psychological and educational research is carried out in social clusters, such as classrooms, schools, or clinics. These settings might differ from each other in potentially important ways, perhaps due to instruction, implementation, rules, or cultures that may vary. Such differences due to social clustering are not only important to control (e.g., in an experimental design or a multilevel statistical model), but might have interesting features which are important to examine in their own right. We use multilevel models to investigate these kinds of effects.

In addition, we often wish to evaluate group differences, such as across gender, race, linguistic background, or ability levels. Such comparisons can be difficult if we do not have strong, confirmatory models to separate measurement bias from genuine group differences. Contemporary statistical models allow us to specify how an unbiased measurement should behave and then how groups should appear, if groups were different versus if groups were the same. These sorts of approaches are important for investigations of treatment and for understanding issues of diversity and equity.

Related work:

Kuntze, M., Branum-Martin, L., & Scott, J. (in press) “Pandemic effects on the reading trajectories of deaf and hard of hearing students: A pilot analysis.” Reading and Writing. doi: 10.1007/s11145-022-10365-4

Lederberg, A., Connor, C.M., Burke, V., Antia, S., & Branum-Martin, L., (2022, July) “Language Arts Instruction in Classrooms with Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students.” In K. Werfel (chair), Literacy and literacy instruction for students who are deaf and hard of hearing: A Tribute to Carol McDonald Connor. Paper presented at the 29th annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Newport Beach, CA.

Kuntze, M., Scott, J. & Branum-Martin, L., (2022, February) “Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on reading development of d/hh students in grades 3-12 at a residential school.” Paper presented at the Association of College Educators-Deaf and Hard of Hearing conference, Omaha, NE.

Branum-Martin, L. (2019, July) “A practical introduction to longitudinal data, visualization, and modeling.” Invited workshop conducted at the 26th annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Toronto, Canada.

Puranik, C., Branum-Martin, L., & Washington, J.A. (2019) “The relation between dialect density and the co-development of writing and reading in African-American children.” Child Development 91(4) 866-882. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13318

Zettler-Greeley, C.M., Bailet, L.L., Murphy, S.P., DeLucca, T.L., & Branum-Martin, L. (2018) “Efficacy of the Nemours Brightstart! Early Literacy Program: Treatment outcomes from a randomized trial with at-risk prekindergartners.” Early Education and Development 29(6), 873-892. doi: 10.1080/10409289.2018.1475202.

Washington, J.A., Branum-Martin, L., Lee-James, R., & Sun, C. (2019) “Reading and language performance of low-income, African American boys in grades 1 to 5.” Reading & Writing Quarterly 35(1), 42-64. doi:10.1080/10573569.2018.1535777.   (reprinted in S.A. Robinson & C. Thompson (Eds.) Promoting Academic Readiness for African American Males with Dyslexia. New York: Routledge)

Hodges, L., Branum-Martin, L., & Frishkoff, G. (2016, September). “A cross-classified bivariate random effects model for word knowledge after a contextual word learning training session.” Paper presented at the 3rd Biennial Developmental Methods Conference, Whitefish, MT.

Branum-Martin, L., Mehta, P.D., Carlson, C.D., Francis, D.J., & Goldenberg, C. (2014). “The nature of Spanish versus English language use at home.” Journal of Educational Psychology 106(1), 181-199. doi: 10.1037/a0033931.

Branum-Martin, L. (2013) “Multilevel modeling: Practical examples to illustrate a special case of SEM.” In Y. Petscher, C. Schatschneider, & D. L. Compton (Eds.) Applied Quantitative Analysis in the Social Sciences. (pp. 95-124). New York: Routledge.

Branum-Martin, L., Foorman, B.R., Francis, D.J., & Mehta, P.D. (2010). “Contextual effects of bilingual programs on early reading.” Journal of Educational Psychology 102(2), 341-355. doi: 10.1037/a0019053.

Branum-Martin, L., Francis, D.J., Mehta, P.D., Cirino, P.T., Foorman, B.R., Miller, J.F., & Iglesias, A. (2009). “Pictures and words: Spanish and English vocabulary in classrooms.” Journal of Educational Psychology 101(4), 897-911. doi: 10.1037/a0015817

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