ABSTRACT
Meta-analysis allows interpretation of accumulated research in unique ways; some 24 meta-analyses, in or related to special education interventions, have become available over the years. This chapter aims to review each of them briefly and draw tentative conclusions about the relative power of interventions as determined by magnitude of mean effect size for each. Selected meta-analyses in special education have been reviewed previously to capture the relative power of various interventions. The meta-analysis on psychotherapy is an outgrowth of several previous meta-analyses in the area designed to study the impact of a wide range of therapies on such behaviors as poor school work, aggression, anxious behavior, and a host of other problems for which children are referred to school or community mental health professionals. In a “mega-analysis” of all of the special education and related interventions, in which mean effect sizes (ESs) from all meta-analyses were combined, an overall special education ES of.55 was obtained.
