The current meta-analysis explored whether shared reading interventions are equally effective (a) across a range of study designs; (b) across a range of different outcome variables; and (c) for children from different SES groups. It also explored the potentially moderating effects of intervention duration, child age, use of dialogic reading techniques, person delivering the intervention and mode of intervention delivery. Our results show that, while there is an effect of shared reading on language development, this effect is smaller than reported in previous meta-analyses (g = 0.215, p < .001). They also show that this effect is moderated by the type of control group used and is negligible in studies with active control groups (g = 0.021, p = .783). Finally, they show no significant effects of differences in outcome variable (ps = .400), socio-economic status (p = .654), or any of our other potential moderators (ps = .103), and non-significant effects for studies with follow-ups (g = 0.145, p = .070).

The fact that many sub-populations do not take part in research, especially participants from lower socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds, is a serious problem in education research. To increase the participation of such groups we must discover what social, economic and practical factors prevent participation, and how to overcome these barriers. In the current paper, we review the literature on this topic, before describing a case study that demonstrates four potential solutions to four barriers to participation in a shared reading intervention for families from lower SES backgrounds. We discuss the implications of our findings for familybased interventions more generally, and the difficulty of balancing strategies to encourage participation with adhering to the methodological integrity of a research study.