Research Example #3

Hosp, John L., and Daniel J. Reschly. “Referral Rates for Intervention or Assessment.” The Journal of Special Education, vol. 37, no. 2, 2003, pp. 67–80.,doi:10.1177/00224669030370020201.

Hosp and Reschly analyzed literature that looks at the referral rates for special education testing and assessment based on students racial groups. They looked at three groups: Caucasian, African American, and Hispanic. They identify the referral stage as being the most important, and so their study focuses on this part. Their goal, like my own research, is to determine disproportionality in special education based on racial identity.

They sought to answer the research question of whether students of different racial or ethnic groups are disproportionately identified for special education services. This is a meta-analysis which looked at other research studies. They also looked at quantitative demographic information within the United States. Data was collected after 1975 from all kinds of publications. The information was then coded and analyzed.

This research seems thorough and vast. There was a lot of statistical analysis involved in the processing of data that I did not understand most of. My concern for this study was just how vast the research was. I think I would have liked more information about their sample populations, since each research study they used had a different way of choosing their population and had a different population. I also wonder if they were able to know if they repeated any populations, which would have changed the data.

They found that there was no significant difference between the referral rates of Hispanic students and Caucasian students. They also found that there was more disproportionality with students who were African American and Caucasian.