The purpose of this quasi-experimental non-equivalent control-group study is to determine the impact of guided doodle note-taking strategies on middle school students’ perceived reading comprehension, compared by gender and whole group. The importance of this study is the impact the data makes on the best practices of teacher instruction. The sample size is 101 students, assuming a medium effect size with a statistical power of 0.80 at the 0.05 alpha level. The study was set in a city district in the Southeast United States. The students vary in socioeconomic levels, with many of them falling below the poverty line and representing a wide variety of ethnicities and races. Data was collected using pre- and post-test practices. The instrument utilized was the Reading Comprehension Scale. The treatment was guided doodle notes while the control group was written guided notes. The findings are based on a comparison of the two forms of guided note-taking. Data were analyzed using an ANCOVA. Results are discussed by RQ. The results are found to not be statistically significant, and the research was unable to reject the null hypotheses. Discussion on the results specific to gender differences is included. It is concluded that there was no significant difference between the two treatments. Implications for the classroom environment are suggested, including the idea of defining non-verbal stimuli to include the physical act of notetaking.
DeWald et al. (Mon,) studied this question.