Review Process

Research on education covers a wide range of topics, interventions, and outcomes. Prior to any review, we develop a formal review protocol to define the parameters for the research to be included within the scope of the review, the literature search, and any area-specific applications of the evidence standards.

We gather studies through a comprehensive search of published and unpublished publicly available research literature, including submissions from distributors/developers, researchers, and the public. We also use the parameters set by the protocol to search relevant electronic databases and websites.

The core of the systematic review process is the assessment of individual studies. The process is designed to ensure that the standards are applied correctly and that each study is represented accurately. We screen studies for eligibility, and then review every study meeting eligibility screens against WWC evidence standards. The result of this process is that each study receives a study rating of Meets Evidence Standards, Meets Evidence Standards with Reservations, or Does Not Meet Evidence Standards, that relates to the amount of confidence we place in the ability of the study to demonstrate causal evidence of the effectiveness of an intervention. We subsequently use the findings from studies meeting standards in evaluating the effectiveness of an intervention.

In many of our products, we combine findings from individual studies into summary measures of effectiveness, including those describing the magnitude of findings, the amount of supporting evidence, and the ability to generalize findings.

We summarize the details of the systematic review and its findings in one of three types of reports: intervention reports, practice guides, and quick reviews. Intervention reports assess all studies of a specific intervention within a topic area, practice guides contain practical recommendations for educators to address challenges in their classrooms and schools, and quick reviews are designed to provide education practitioners and policymakers with timely and objective assessments of the quality of the research evidence for recently released research papers and reports.