Background to

The Indexing Project of the journal

Education and Training in Developmental Disabilities

 

            Welcome to the Indexing Project of Education and Training in Developmental Disabilities (ETDD), the journal of the Council for Exceptional Children’s Division on Developmental Disabilities. The journal began publication in 1966 as Education and Training of the Mentally Retarded. Following changes in social and terminology trends, the name changed to Education and Training in Mental Retardation in 1987, Education in Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities in 1994, and recently in 2003 to Education and Training in Developmental Disabilities. It has a subscription of approximately 4000 and is sent numerous countries around the world. The topics of the journal are related to individuals with Developmental Disabilities, their families, peers, support personnel, teachers, administrators, and paraprofessionals. Its coverage of the ages of persons with developmental disabilities spans preschool to elderly. All topics relate directly to the field of Developmental Disabilities with an emphasis on issues pertaining to education.

            In 1991 and 2000 key articles appeared in the journal, the cumulative author indexes. Author names, corresponding article titles, and journal volume information were presented. These articles inspired and helped make possible the creation of the present Internet searchable database.

            The ETDD Internet database consists of all the information in the cumulative author indexes, updated to the last calendar year. A major addition here was the coding of all the articles in the journal by keywords so that articles could be searched according to topic. The result is the ability of being able to access the list of all related articles that have been published in this journal.

            The advantages of this search engine are:

1. the articles are all directly relevant to the field of developmental disabilities, thus avoiding the confusion of multiple terminologies pertaining to persons with developmental disabilities which is found in larger more general online databases.

2. the coding of the articles was done by experts with a long time familiarity with the field of Developmental Disabilities and CEC so the topics are similar to those found in use by CEC.

3. the searches are quick and direct since the only articles indexed are those that deal directly with Developmental Disabilities. Searching the larger online databases can involve sorting through large numbers of articles which often have to be laboriously screened for ones of relevance.

4. the results produce references to all articles in the journal. Some of the larger online databases will not yield all this information.

The result is, therefore, a tool that will be of interest to anyone with interests in the field of Developmental Disabilities.

 

Development of the database

 

            The first step was the determination of the prevalent topics in the journal. The journal titles were treated as sources of data and subjected to a qualitative theme analysis. In cases where the nature of the article could not be determined by the title, its abstract was reviewed. The two authors of this project first read a large sample of titles. As we proceeded four major organizational categories emerged. These are represented in the database as drop-down boxes. The drop down boxes are recognized by the little colored down-arrow at the right segment of the box. These boxes can be chosen individually or in combination.

            The first category/drop-down box is Support Personnel. We noticed that many of the articles did not focus on the individual with developmental disabilities per se, but on the people who are directly involved with them. Examples of these people are families, teachers, para-professionals, and peers. As you will see within the drop-down box categories there are subcategories. For example, in our “family” example there are subcategories such as parents, mothers, siblings, and grandparents.

            The second category/drop-down box is simply called “topics.” This field contains what we found to be the most common topics in the journal. A complete listing of the topics is displayed on the website in Background section. It is quite easy, though, just to scroll through the various topics on the search page itself. Like the “support personnel” category we found that many “topics” had subcategories. For example, the Inclusion category had subcategories such as community, consultations, instruction, placement, and school/social.

            The third category/drop-down box is “target disability.” We found that many of the articles addressed specific populations within the field of developmental disabilities, such as mild, moderate, severe, multiple, Down Syndrome, and Autism.

            The fourth drop down box is “age.” By pressing the down arrow on this box, it will be revealed that all the major lifespan ages are covered.

 

            A more specific analysis of each superordinate category yielded a number of subcategories (see Table 1 below). The user of this database may wish to review Table 1 to become familiar with the possible keyword codes, although it is quite easy to just scroll through on the search page. Agreement between raters about the categories was generally consistent, but when there was disagreement further discussion resolved any differences. Once the categories and subcategories were generated, all of the articles in the journal were coded by the first author. Multiple classifications occurred frequently, e.g., the article could pertain to persons who had diagnoses of severe AND persons who were profound; the topic might include both communication AND attitudes. Following this, all coding was verified by the second author and a research assistant. Keywords, author names, support persons, age, and types of disability were then entered into a Internet database file. Search capabilities were created so that keywords could be chosen and all articles containing those keywords identified.


Table 1

List of Categories and Subcategories

 

1.       Support persons

a.   Employers

b.       Families 

i. Parent

ii. Mother

iii Sibling

iv. Grandparent

c.   Location

i. State

ii. Country

d.  Media

e.  Non-disabled

f.   Peers

g.  Principals

h.       Teachers

   i. Preservice

   ii. Paraprofessional

i.         Transdisciplinary

j.         Service providers

 

2.       Topics

a.        Administration 

                                                                     i.      Placement

                                                                   ii.      Services

b.       Aging

c.       Assessment

                                                                        i.      Cognition

ii.  Education

iii. Emotion (affect)

iv. Emotion (depression)

v.  Emotion (motivation)

vi. Focus groups

vii. Functional assessments

viii. IEP

ix. Individual characteristics

x. Observations

xi. Person centered planning

xii. Scales

xiii. Team  

d.       Attitudes

                                                                     i.      Intervention

e.       Communication

                                                                     i.      Auditory integration

                                                                   ii.      Non-verbal

                                                                  iii.      Non-verbal/gestures

                                                                  iv.      Non-verbal/augmentative

                                                                    v.      Requesting

                                                                  vi.      Sign language

                                                                 vii.      Visual

f.         Coping

g.        Cultural/disadvantaged

h.        Definition

                                                                     i.      Classification

                                                                   ii.      Terminology

i.          Deinstitutionalization

                                                                     i.      Institutions

j.          Employment

                                                                     i.      Productivity

                                                                   ii.      Sheltered

                                                                  iii.      Social

                                                                  iv.      Supported

                                                                    v.      Training

k.        Historical

l.          Inclusion

                                                                     i.      Consultations

                                                                   ii.      Instruction

                                                                  iii.      Placement

                                                                  iv.      School

                                                                    v.      Social

                                                                  vi.      Social/friendships

m.      Instruction

                                                                     i.      ABA

                                                                   ii.      Curriculum

                                                                  iii.      Generalization

                                                                  iv.      Life skills

                                                                    v.      Life skills/language (reading, spelling)

                                                                  vi.      Life skills/mathematics

                                                                 vii.      Observational

                                                               viii.      Play

                                                                 ix.      Productivity

                                                                   x.      Small group

                                                                 xi.      Task analysis

                                                                xii.      Transition planning

n.       International 

o.       Individual’s perspectives

p.       Physical

                                                                     i.      Motor

                                                                   ii.      Perceptual-motor

                                                                  iii.      Physical education

q.       Quality of Life

r.        Religion

s.       Research

                                                                     i.      Meta-analysis

                                                                   ii.      Research/practice

                                                                  iii.      Reviews

t.         Self-determination

                                                                     i.      Choice making

                                                                   ii.      Perceptions

                                                                  iii.      Self-management

u.       Social

                                                                     i.      Behavior

                                                                   ii.      Behavior/behavior management

                                                                  iii.      Behavior/challenging behavior

                                                                  iv.      Behavior/medical

                                                                    v.      Behavior/self-stimulation

                                                                  vi.      Safety

                                                                 vii.      Safety/HIV

                                                               viii.      Safety/sexuality

                                                                 ix.      Skills

                                                                   x.      Skills/awareness

                                                                 xi.      Skills/instruction

                                                                xii.      Skills/performance

v.         Special Olympics

w.       Technology

                                                                     i.      Assistive devices

                                                                   ii.      Audio-visual

                                                                  iii.      Computers

x.       Transition
  

3.       Target Disability

a.       Mild

b.       Moderate

c.       Severe

d.       Profound

e.       Autism

f.         Savant

g.        Prader-Willi

h.        Asperger ‘s syndrome

i.          Multiple

j.          Down syndrome

k.        Behavior disorder

l.          Dual diagnosis

m.      Feral

n.        Deaf-blind

 

4.       Age

a.       Infant 

b.       Young children (preschool)

c.       Children (elementary)

d.       Youth (adolescents)

e.       Transition (youth to adult)

f.         Adult

g.       Elderly

 

 

 
Using the Search Engine of the ETDD database

 

There are four organizational categories or “drop down boxes” in the database: (1) support personnel, (2) topic, (3) target disability, and (4) age. Within each box are a number of specific subcategory terms. For example, in the support personnel box there is a list that includes families, peers, teachers, etc. If your topic of interest was articles pertaining to families, then you would click on the side bar of the support personnel box, scroll down to families and click on families. Then to initiate the search the SEARCH button at the bottom right on the page would be pressed. This same procedure can be done with any of the categorical boxes. For example, if your interest was autism, then you could go to the target population box, scroll down to autism, select it, and then press the SEARCH button. The user of this database may wish to familiarize themselves with all the categories available before dynamically exploring them within the database search facility (go to Table 1, List of Categories and Subcategories). The initial search result will yield all the relevant articles including title, Date, Volume, and an article number. By clicking on a specific article number further information is provided: author(s), page numbers and other keywords that were used with this article.

 

            Further search refinement can be done by choosing more than one drop down box. For example, if your interest was communication with preschool children, then the topic box would be accessed, scrolled until communication was highlighted and then chosen . Then the age box would be accessed and scrolled until preschool was seen and then chosen. The SEARCH button would then be clicked to yield all relevant articles included under communication AND preschool.

 

            This project has been generously supported through funds and personnel provided by the Faculty of Education at The University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.

 

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