A Synthesis of Research on Reading from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

A Note About the NICHD Research Program

The National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) educational research program, initiated in 1965, began to focus more on reading difficulties as it became clear how extensive the reading problem was in the general population. The 1985 Health Research Extension Act resulted in a new charge to the NICHD to improve the quality of reading research by conducting long-term, prospective, longitudinal, and multidisciplinary research. Reid Lyon led the new charge by closely coordinating the work of over 100 researchers in medicine, psychology, and education in approximately 14 different research centers. (Numbers vary from year to year.)

A major problem with reading research in the past was that findings often did not replicate. One researcher would get one result, another researcher would get the opposite result. Lyon and colleagues identified that the key problem in obtaining replicability was that researchers were studying different samples of children. Lyon established detailed sampling requirements for the research and increased scientific rigor in other areas. Consequently, the NICHD research program has produced a growing body of highly replicable findings in the area of early reading acquisition and reading disabilities that have been reported in over 2,000 refereed journal articles since 1965.