LENA Start Performance Report
The LENA Start Performance Report examines the impact of your program on children and families at the group, site, or partner level through aggregated data for Words, Turns, Snapshot results, and Parent Surveys.
What information is in the Performance Report?
LENA's performance reporting compares participating families’ change on LENA metrics at two timepoints: Baseline, and Graduation. Each group's data becomes available for inclusion in the Performance Report as soon as the group is closed out, or 14 days after its final session. Click each item for more detail on what the report shows and the requirements for inclusion in the report.
What's being measured?
- Adult Words are words spoken by adults to and near the child.
- Conversational Turns are pairs of back and forth interactions between the child and an adult.
- Hover over any bar to see the numerical value.
The N shows the number of children whose LENA Days are included in the graph.
The purple bar shows the average* for all first valid LENA Days. This is the pre-LENA, baseline measure.
The green Grad bar shows the average* for the 2 or 3 most recent valid LENA Days occurring between Session 6 and one week after Session 10. (A family must have at least two valid recordings in that period, and if there are more we average the last 3.) This represents the post-LENA graduation measure.
Inclusion criteria
|
S1 |
S2 | S3 | S4 | S5 | S6 | S7 | S8 | S9 |
S10 |
|
| Required for both graduation and Performance Report inclusion | Attend Sessions 1-4 | |||||||||
| Attend 7+ total sessions | ||||||||||
| 6+ total attempted recordings | ||||||||||
| Additional requirements for Performance Report inclusion | 1 valid recording before Session 3 | |||||||||
| 6+ total valid recordings | ||||||||||
| 2+ valid recordings after Session 6 |
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- Drawing from the set of groups that meet your context and date criteria, the Parent Change section includes families who meet all of the following criteria:
-
Met graduation requirements
- Attended Sessions 1-4, plus at least 3 additional sessions
- Attempted at least 6 LENA Days total
- Completed at least 6 valid LENA Days:
- one valid LENA Day prior to Session 3
- at least 2 valid LENA Days between Session 6 and Session 10
-
Met graduation requirements
The LENA Day date is the date when the recording was made, not the date of upload.
The session date is the scheduled date in LENA Online. The system does not track make-up session dates. This means that if any family misses Session 1 it is critical to make it up quickly so the family will still have time to do a LENA Day before Session 3.
The inclusion rules do not take into account the time of the session, only the date. So, if Session 3 is at 7pm on April 15, the first recording must occur no later than April 14.
For each measure and each time point, we average the Standard Scores from all included children, and then display the corresponding percentile.
While Standard Scores don't appear directly on any LENA report, they are the bridge between raw counts and percentiles. Neither raw counts nor percentiles are appropriate for averaging. Raw counts are age-dependent, and percentile ranks fall on an uneven scale - that is, a one percentile point difference at either the high or low end of the scale represents a much bigger "advance" than a one percentile point difference closer to the middle of the scale. Standard Score values have been age-referenced to LENA’s normative database, they are generated on a uniform scale suitable for averaging, and each Standard Score corresponds predictably to a percentile ranking.
What's being measured?
The LENA Snapshot is a 52-item parent questionnaire to assess language development in children 2 months to 36 months of age. The Snapshot can be administered monthly.
The N shows the number of children represented in the Snapshots graph.
The purple bar shows the average score* from the very first Snapshot for all included children.
The green bar shows the average score* from the same children's final Snapshot.
Hover over any bar to see the numerical value.
Inclusion criteria
|
S1 |
S2 | S3 | S4 | S5 | S6 | S7 | S8 | S9 |
S10 |
| Attend All | |||||||||
| Attend 7+ | |||||||||
| Snapshot | Snapshot | ||||||||
Drawing from the set of groups that meet your context and date criteria, the Child Change section includes families who meet all of the following criteria:
- Attended Sessions 1-4, plus at least 3 additional sessions
- Child was at least 5 months old at Session 1
- Child was not older than 36 months for both the baseline and grad Snapshots
- A Snapshot was completed within ± 14 days of Session 1
- Another Snapshot was completed by same caregiver within ± 14 days of Graduation
For each measure and each time point, we average the Standard Scores from all included children, and then display the corresponding percentile.
While Standard Scores don't appear directly on any LENA report, they are the bridge between raw counts and percentiles. Neither raw counts nor percentiles are appropriate for averaging. Raw counts are age-dependent, and percentile ranks fall on an uneven scale - that is, a one percentile point difference at either the high or low end of the scale represents a much bigger "advance" than a one percentile point difference closer to the middle of the scale. Standard Score values have been age-referenced to LENA’s normative database, they are generated on a uniform scale suitable for averaging, and each Standard Score corresponds predictably to a percentile ranking.
Note that it may take several months before environmental changes in language experience are reflected in the child’s language skills. Although we have seen significant pre-post elevations immediately after LENA intervention, for some children the effects may not be observable for six months or longer.
Words, Turns, and Snapshots data are calculated and displayed for the subset of families who meet the same criteria described above and who also had Adult Words and/or Conversational Turns below the 50th percentile at baseline.
The N shows the number of children whose families are in the Lower Talk group.
- A baseline LENA Day below the 50th %ile on either words or turns places a family in the Lower Talk group for all three graphs (Words, Turns, Snapshots).
- Everyone in the Lower Talk Families group is also in the All Families group.
Why measure these families separately? LENA Start was designed especially for families who have fewer words and conversational turns because increasing early talk has so many benefits for infants and toddlers. These families often show the greatest growth in words and turns, too!
Enrolled = the total number of children who were enrolled in the groups that are covered by the report parameter, regardless of whether they ultimately dropped, completed without graduating, completed as graduated, or met the requirements for inclusion in the Performance Report pre-post measures.
Takeup = the number of participating families. A family is considered to have participated if they attended at least one session and/or submitted at least one recording. Takeup is also expressed as a percent of total enrollment (# participating families / # enrolled families).
Graduated = the total number of families who met LENA Start graduation requirements. The graduation rate is also expressed as a percent of participating families (# graduating families / # participating families).
The number of families contributing to each pre-post measure in the report ("N") may be lower than the number of families who graduated. The criteria for inclusion in the Performance Report are more stringent than the graduation criteria, particularly for recordings (must be valid). In a perfect world, the takeup, graduated, and N values would be very similar. When large discrepancies exist, it's an opportunity to examine and problem solve the barriers to full participation in the population being served.
Drawing from the set of groups that meet your context and date criteria, the Parent Survey section includes all families for whom the same caregiver completed the entire survey at the beginning and end of their LENA Start group.
The LENA Start Parent Survey is a questionnaire about caregiver behaviors and perceptions across 8 domains.
The N shows the number of families represented in the Parent Survey Results graph.
Total % Change - The turquoise portion of the pie chart shows the percent of included families whose responses to the post-participation survey indicated a change for the better overall, relative to their pre-participation responses.
% of Families with Positive Change by domain - Each bar represents a perceptual/behavioral domain. The turquoise portion of each bar shows what percent of the responding families' responses after participating in LENA Start indicated a change for the better in that domain, relative to their responses before participation. (Note that a positive change in "Parental Stress" indicates a reduction in stress.)
Child names do not appear on the Performance Report. Group names are masked on the printed report accessed by a user without "view child name" permission.
Families can vary considerably in the degree to which they engage with their Start group. Applying minimum participation requirements to performance reporting ensures that your aggregated group outcomes reflect only those families who achieved a reasonable degree of participation in the program as designed. (See each section above for the inclusion criteria.) It’s important to consider why some families may not fully participate, but for Performance Reports we focus only on those who do.
Configuration: Apply filters to show the data that matter to you
When accessing the Performance Report at the organization level, use the context menu and date filter in combination to report on certain groups, partners, or implementation waves.
- Set the context.
- Select a specific partner organization to see aggregated data for groups run by that partner.
- Select the top-level Start organization to see aggregated data for groups in all nested partner organizations.
- Set the date range.
- The report will draw from any group in the selected context whose first session occurred between the selected start date and end date (regardless of the groups' graduation session date).
- Click the purple refresh button to see the updated report.
These reports reports pull data from all completed groups in the selected organization and its nested partner organizations with start dates within the range entered - including groups in inactive partner suborgs.
Example context and date configurations:
- In the context of a top-level organization, input Start Date 1/1/2020 and End Date 4/30/2020.
- This will pull data from any groups in your nested partner organization, that began during the months of January through April, regardless of when graduation occurred.
- In this way, you can separate data for late spring groups that began in late April and ended in July from true summer groups that began in June, even if the groups overlapped considerably.
- In the context of a top-level organization, enter a date range that includes all Session 1 dates for the first contract year.
- In the context of a partner organization, enter a date range that includes Session 1 dates for all groups they have ever run.
Session dates are listed in the Start Sessions export, which is in the Operational Data tab of the Data Exports section of LENA Online.
Access the Data Summary and Site Comparison reports
The Data Summary and Site Comparison tabs present additional information about your completed groups.
Print and save the Performance Report
You can print and/or save a PDF of the report at any point.
The context menu and date range sections do not print, but the parameters are stated in text at the top of the printout.