Moving to Educational Validity: A Reply to Test, Spooner, and Cooke

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Abstract
Our article on educational validity summarized the major questions to be addressed for the evaluation of educational outcomes in programs for students with severe disabilities (Voeltz & Evans, 1983). In particular, we argued that the predominant emphasis upon single-subject research designs and the demonstration of the internal validity of intervention experiments were not sufficient for educational validity—a concept that requires systematic attention to larger issues of meaning-fulness in relationship to criterion environments. In this paper we respond to the arguments of Test, Spooner, and Cooke (1987) that single-subject design methodologies are capable of expansion to address educational validity. Based upon both theory and empirical data, we maintain that the serious limitations of the existing traditional methodologies continue to be problematic, so that we encourage movement toward a more comprehensive evaluative framework. Such a framework is critical to ensure that services and practices for persons with severe disabilities will be guided by research findings as well as social values.

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