A Systematic Review of Treatment Acceptability in Mathematics Instruction for Students with Learning Disabilities

Treatment acceptability is an aspect of social validity that refers to participants’ beliefs and perceptions about the intervention, such as the helpfulness of the strategies or the interventions’ efficacy to improve performance. The purpose of this study was to conduct a systematic review of treatment acceptability measures administered during mathematics interventions for students with learning disabilities (LD). We sought to identify the characteristics of the measures and the treatment acceptability outcomes. To be included in this review, studies had to (a) focus on testing the effectiveness of a mathematics intervention, (b) include preschool through 12th grade students who were diagnosed with LD, (c) administer student or teacher measures of treatment acceptability, and (d) employ a single case or group design. This systematic review included 23 studies (22 included student measures, 8 included teacher measures). The majority of studies that reported information about treatment acceptability were single case design (91%), used interview-based measures (47%) and reported qualitative results (90%). Fewer studies used measures that allowed for researchers to provide quantitative results (20%) of treatment acceptability. The results of this systematic review indicated students’ and teachers’ perceptions about mathematics interventions for students with LD were overwhelmingly positive. We discuss implications of our findings in relation to improving the efficacy of mathematics interventions for students with LD