In choosing a dyslexia program for your child, it will help to understand the various categories or types of programs. Some programs are geared toward building on your child's academic and intellectual strengths, whereas others are focused mostly on addressing weaknesses. The programs that focus on weaknesses usually offer some sort of skill-building exercises or training. Many do not include specific instruction on reading; these programs are either based on the assumption that acquisition of the underlying skills taught will enable your child to learn to read well on his own, or that the treatment program will be followed by appropriate tutoring.

Questions to Ask

When considering a program for your child, you should start by determining what specific problem or symptom will be treated, and what the expected outcome of such treatment will be. You also need to consider whether you will need to supplement the program with additional tutoring or therapies for your child, and if so, what sort of extra support is recommended.

Some factors to consider are:

Expected outcomes. Find out what the expected or usual outcome is of the program for children the same age and with similar difficulties as your child. No one can guarantee success in all cases, but you should be able to get a general sense of what the typical results are for most children. Ask what kind of children do best with the particular therapy, and what kinds of issues cause children to have difficulty.

Program history and success rate. Find out how long the particular therapy has been used and what the reported rate of success is. Be sure you understand what “success” means for each program; successful acquisition of specific skills does not necessarily transfer to improved reading ability. Be sure to ask what sort of evaluation is done to screen prospective clients to determine whether they are likely to benefit from the particular therapy.

Duration of program and time commitment. Find out how long you can expect your child to continue with the program. Ask whether there are specific activities or practice that must be done at home during the program or after its completion. Consider whether you and your child are willing and able to make the required commitment. Beware of costly programs that are open-ended as to the amount of time you will need to pay for professional services.

Qualifications of therapist. Find out what sort of background and training the therapist who will be working with your child has that is specific to the program being offered. If your child will be at a clinic with many staff members, find out whether your child will be working with the same person at each visit and what sort of training and supervision the support staff has.

Program reputation and references. Learn what you can about the reputation of the program you are considering, and ask the therapist you will be working with for references. Most qualified professionals will have a list of former clients who are willing to talk about their experiences.

The best place to start learning about a program is by critically reading information available from the program providers, such as in books, brochures, or on their Web sites, with the above questions in mind. Once you have a basic understanding of what the program claims to offer, you should explore other sources of information, including contacting references.

Understanding and Evaluating Research

Many programs claim to be supported by scientific research, but such claims may be exaggerated or overstated. Research that has been conducted or funded by individuals with a financial stake in the program can also be biased; researchers may be tempted to report or manipulate their data to present it in the light most favorable to the program. Do not rely merely on summaries or news articles about research; try to get a copy of the actual journal article describing the research.

Many excellent programs do not have a lot of research support but are grounded on well-established scientific knowledge about the process of learning or on long-term experience by clinicians or teachers involved in developing the methods. Anecdotal evidence or testimonials can provide excellent insight into a program, but they can also be unreliable and may present only a carefully selected view. In reviewing evidence of any kind — whether in the form of published research, news articles, or personal accounts — focus on the actual facts and details presented, not on adjectives or superlatives used to describe the program.

Quantitative vs. Qualitative Research

Quantitative research is research based on measurements of objective facts, usually with group studies, and often includes comparison of a treatment group with a control group. Generally, all members of the treatment group will be exposed to an identical, tightly controlled therapy, and standardized assessments will be used to measure results. Such research is useful for determining overall effectiveness of a program, but it can be misleading when applied to individual cases. Although the overall validity of the research is improved when researchers are able to work with a large sample group, larger samples also tend to obscure individual variations. It will not help you to know that a program helps 80 percent of participants if your child is one of the 20 percent who cannot be helped by that approach.

Quantitative research is also extremely difficult to conduct when studying behavior and learning in children, as it is not practical in most cases to arrange truly randomized groupings and extremely difficult to control for outside influences on the children. Studies of children are particularly prone to a placebo effect or “Hawthorne Effect” — improvement that results primarily from the psychological effects of participating in a study as opposed to the specific program being implemented. A study comparing students receiving a specific therapy with a control group of children receiving no therapy at all is also prone to be misleading; it may simply mean that a given program is better than doing nothing at all.

Qualitative research involves the very close study of a number of cases, with research generally reporting detailed subjective observations of highly variable circumstances. It is more probing and comprehensive at an individual level and is likely to be presented in the form of a collection of case studies or clinical observations. It provides better insight into how an individual child might fare with a given program, and what factors influence failure or success; at the same time, it produces few hard facts that can be generalized across all cases. It is also difficult to verify or replicate observations and prone to the same potential bias in reporting as quantitative research.

In addition to providing insight and information about a program, qualitative research helps practitioners improve delivery of their program over time, as they can use such research to better tailor their programs to the needs of different individuals. It also can help improve the process of identifying which students are likely to do best with the program.