JCPSLP Vol 21 No 1 2019

• CINAHL, Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, MEDLINE, SpeechBITE and Web of Science were searched yielding over 300 results.

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• 33 publications were retained based on their title and/or abstract. The remainder were discarded as they were judged as irrelevant or duplicates.

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• All were read. 21 publications were discarded as they were not assessment/intervention studies.

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• 12 relevant publications were retained including one meta-analysis, two systematic reviews and nine intervention studies.

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Figure 1. Systematic search

Critical appraisal Josie decided to look more closely at the Ebbels et al. (2017) intervention study, given that it was conducted in a specialist school with a high prevalence of DLD, with students in the age-range 9–17 years. These parameters somewhat align with a youth justice setting, although she was aware that the school does not cater for students with behavioural difficulties. She used the research appraisal tool by Polgar and Thomas (2013) to guide her critical evaluation of the paper.

Ebbels et al. (2017) introduced a clear clinical/research problem, arguing that adolescents with DLD are routinely excluded from SLP services and have been included in relatively few intervention studies. The authors aimed to evaluate whether students with severe DLD can improve their performance on targeted areas following 1:1 therapy with a SLP; and whether factors such as gender, receptive language skills and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) affect students’ responses to intervention. Using a quasi-experimental pre-test/post-test design, the authors provided individualised interventions for each

Table 1. Search results

Publication

Key details

Setting

Secondary school

Ebbels et al. (2012) conducted an RCT and concluded semantic-based oral language interventions can be effective for adolescents, with significant gains maintained 5 months post-therapy for adolescents with severe language difficulties.

Age

9–15 years

Study design RCT Targets

Semantic categories

Limitations

Small scale; based in one school

Setting

Secondary school

Ebbels, Marié, Murphy, & Turner (2014) focused on improving comprehension of coordinating conjunctions and showed that gains were maintained 4 months post-therapy.

Age

11–16 years

Study design RCT Targets

Comprehension of coordinating conjunctions

Limitations Small scale; based in one school

Ebbels et al. (2017) evaluated the effectiveness of individual oral language interventions for older children with DLD.

Setting

Specialist school for children with language disorder Age 9–17 years Receptive language; expressive language; academic skills; social skills/pragmatics; phonological awareness No control group; outcomes considered in one school term only Non-custodial but sentenced to court: community; alternative education; Behavioural, emotional and social difficulties school

Study design Pre-test/post-test with blind post-test Targets

Limitations

Setting

Gregory & Bryan (2011) conducted the first assessment-intervention study of its kind with young people in youth justice. Assessment highlighted high incidence of previously undiagnosed speech, language and communication needs (SLCN). Specifically tailored speech-language pathology intervention was effective for the majority of participants reassessed on standardised assessment measures following intervention, with 75% of participants demonstrating gains across all areas of communication addressed in intervention at post-test and 85–88% of participants demonstrating increased Clinical Evaluation of Fundamentals subtests scores at post-test.

Age 11–18 years Study design Pre-test/post-test Targets

Individually tailored speech-language pathology interventions

Limitations No control group

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JCPSLP Volume 21, Number 1 2019

Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology