SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1611145
School-based randomised controlled trials for ADHD and accompanying impairments: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Provisionally accepted
- University of York, York, United Kingdom
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Children and young people with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) face disproportional challenges due to core symptoms of ADHD (i.e., inattention and hyperactivity) interfering with academic, social, and behavioural functioning. The significant rise in the prevalence of ADHD and difficulties experienced by children and young people over recent years has put a lot more emphasis on school-based interventions. Despite this, and the tremendous amount of randomised controlled trials reporting school-based interventions for ADHD over the past decades, there has been no systematic reporting of the pooled effects of such trials in the literature. Hence, this study seeks, for the first time, to report the effects of school-based randomised controlled trials on the core symptoms of ADHD and other difficulties, i.e., academic, social, emotional and behavioural (i.e., externalising). In total, 26 randomised controlled trials met the inclusion criteria, 22 (n=2102) of which were included in our meta-analyses. Our findings showed that school-based randomised controlled trials were effective in improving combined ADHD (d=-.28, p< .0001), inattention (d=-.33, p< .0001), academic performance (d=.37, p< .0001), and social skills (d=.28, p< .001), and reducing externalising problems (d=-.32, p=.001). There was no significant effect for hyperactivity/impulsivity (d=-.09, p=.22). Our findings showed that school-based randomised controlled trials improve a range of difficulties experienced by children and young people with ADHD, but they lack focus on hyperactivity/impulsivity. Future interventions would benefit from a more comprehensive focus on hyperactivity/impulsivity for system-wide improvement. Issues related to high levels of heterogeneity and potential reporter bias are further discussed.
Keywords: Beliz Yegencik: Conceptualization, Data curation, investigation, methodology, resources, visualization, Writing -original draft, Writingreview & editing. Beth Bell: Supervision
Received: 13 Apr 2025; Accepted: 19 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yegencik, Deniz and Bell. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Beliz Yegencik, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, United Kingdom
Emre Deniz, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, United Kingdom
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