Relationship Between Reading Pretest and Social Studies Outcomes From PACT: Evidence for a Skill-by-Treatment Interaction

Previous research on Promoting Adolescent Comprehension of Text (PACT) found significant student-level variability in outcomes. The current study examined a potential skill-by-treatment interaction with 1,376 eighth-grade students from 13 middle schools as part of a larger evaluation study. Treatment students scored higher than control students on a measure of social studies content knowledge among students who scored 1 SD below the mean, at the mean, and 1 SD above the mean on preintervention measures of reading comprehension and reading fluency. Using social studies content knowledge, pretest reading comprehension and fluency resulted in estimates of area under the curve of .77 (95% CI = [.76, .78]) and .56 (95% CI = [.55, .57]), respectively. Both sets of pretest data identified a threshold score that approximated the 30th percentile. Thus, there appeared to be a skill-by-treatment interaction for PACT based on preintervention reading skills.