vation and categorisation of communicative (e.g. questions, directives, clarifications) and affective (e.g. positive and negative behaviours) items. The coding system is based on micro-analytic theory [52, 53] and was developed by the team specifically to analyse children’s collaborative interaction and has been shown in our studies to successfully detect changes in talk [29, 39, 54, 55]. The coding system incorporates elements from research into collaborative learning, conversation analysis and language impairment [29, 39, 53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60]. Video interaction will be coded by blinded RAs trained to fidelity by the Chief Investigator who has used this coding system extensively. RAs will train by watching and practice-coding training videos until they reach inter-rater reliability with these previously coded video-recordings. Areas of disagreement with the training videos will be discussed and explained by the Chief Investigator. Inter-rater reliability will further be tested between all RAs taking part in the study using a sample of 15% of all video-recordings.
The analysis of all measures will not be concerned with the effectiveness of the study intervention, but instead will seek to inform the feasibility objectives. In particular, this data will be used to characterise the groups at baseline, assess the proportion of analysable data at follow up and provide estimates of key population parameters, all of which will inform the design of a future full scale trial. The analysis of the health economic data will be principally concerned with the completeness and quality of this data. This will be reported together with a calculated estimate of the costs of running E-PLAYS within the NHS and schools and costs of a possible future full-scale RCT.
Process evaluation analysis
(a) Speech and language therapists’ and teaching assistants’ views
The focus groups (a) will last around 1 h and will be audio-recorded and subsequently professionally transcribed. Nvivo 9 software will be used to aid a thematic analysis which will follow the guidelines of Braun and Clarke :
(1) Becoming familiar with the data, (2) generating initial codes, (3) searching for themes, (4) reviewing themes and (5) defining and naming themes.
(b) Children’s views on E-PLAYS
Immediately after participating in sessions, children will be asked to rate their enjoyment and use of E-PLAYS using the Fun Toolkit . The tool is easy to complete and requires no writing. It comprises a ‘Smileyometer’ scale; visual analogue scale with ‘smiley’ faces, ‘Fun Sorter’ (children sort which attributes of the game they like best) and ‘Again Again table’ (children rate which aspects of the game they would like to play again). The tool measures, besides user satisfaction, usability (in software terms) and ease of use. The Fun Toolkit has shown good test-retest reliability in previous research . The Smileyometer, Fun Sorter and Again Again table produce numerical data for scoring; however, they are also designed to stimulate and encourage children to talk about the different aspects of the game and their enjoyment.
(c) Fidelity evaluation
(i) Number of intervention sessions
Descriptive statistics will be prepared of the number of intervention sessions completed for each child and their content and duration. The possible impact of treatment fidelity and adherence on outcomes will be explored.
Teaching assistants will be observed by RAs whilst delivering two sessions each to see how they actually deliver E-PLAYS in practice. A crucial aspect of the intervention is the extent to which the instructions in the manual are adhered to. Observers will also record instances of direct verbal feedback and children’s requests for help and comments.
The data from the open-ended questionnaire given to SLTs and teaching assistants will be analysed by coding responses into categories known as a ‘coding frame’ . Given that this is a feasibility study and therefore exploratory in nature, the coding frame will be developed after the data is collected to cover a range of potential responses.
(a) Q