FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY, THE
Grant: $229,263 - National Institutes of Health - Sep. 30, 2009
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Award Description: The purpose of the administrative supplement is to accelerate the tempo and amount of data acquisition, coding, and analysis for three of the five center projects. This will be accomplished by hiring additional staff, enabling increased hours for current part-time staff, and procuring additional needed equipment and supplies. The additional staff, staff hours for current part-time staff, and equipment and supplies will be used in activities that are within the existing peer-reviewed and approved scope of the three target center projects. Project 2: School-Based Classification and Identification The two major studies for Project 2 include longitudinal follow-up of the development of reading skills. We had originally proposed to track reading growth using individually-administered measures that were being collected by participating schools. However, severe budget reductions in public school funding have forced the district to forgo these planned progress monitoring and outcomes assessments. We therefore propose to hire staff and administer progress monitoring and outcome measures longitudinally. Expenditures in the form of increased time for a project coordinator, three part-time testers, one additional coder, and equipment and supplies for the additional testing and videotape coding, will allow us to collect longitudinal follow-up assessments that originally were being collected by the schools before a state wide budget cut necessitated its elimination. We also will increase the amount of videotape data that can be coded and analyzed, thereby improving the power and precision of our study. Project 3: Large-Scale Classification and Quantitative Behavior Genetic Studies The genetic and environmental influences on reading and other achievement measures available in the Progress Monitoring and Reporting Network (PMRN) are being examined in on a large ethnically and socioeconomically diverse set of twins. Estimates of heritability and environmental influences are showing differential heritabilities and environmental influences on a subset of academic measures, with increased influences of environment for minorities and low SES twins. The PMRN has ended up with over two million students and provides us with a wealth of data. To capitalize on this unanticipated wealth of data, we need to acquire a more powerful computer with sufficient RAM to make modeling practical with two million participants. Project 5: Florida Longitudinal Study As part of the existing Florida Longitudinal Study, we have collected writing samples and a set of language and reading measures from over 300 first-grade students who are being followed longitudinally. We have developed a method of scoring writing samples using the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) coding system and have used it successfully to score an expository writing sample provided by participants in the study. However, scoring writing samples is a labor intensive project and we have only been able to score a single narrative passage as a writing sample for each participant. We will hire part-time research assistants who will be trained in the coding system. By building on our capacity to score writing samples, we will be able to score a second expository writing sample and two narrative writing samples that we already have collected from our participants. Having an additional expository passage scored will allow us to rule out effects that might be passage specific. Having two narrative passages scored will allow us to examine the generalizability of effects across narrative and expository genres. Expenditures in the form of hiring a project coordinator, five part- time staff, services of a consultant with expertise in SALT, and two computers, we will expand our capacity to analyze writing samples that will enable us to examine the generalizability of our findings across writing samples and genres (narrative versus expository)
Project Description: Not yet started.
Jobs Summary: N/A (Total jobs reported: 0)
Project Status: Not Started
This award's data was last updated on Sep. 30, 2009. Help expand these official descriptions using the wiki below.
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