A children’s visual analogue intelligibility scale
Background: Speech intelligibility, or transfer of a message resulting in successful decoding by listeners, is a basic communication skill. When impaired, negative effects may include impaired emotional, social, and/or educational development. Intelligibility has been investigated cross-linguistically using different methods. One method involves professionals, parents, or others rating children’s intelligibility. Children’s self-ratings of their intelligibility and how this relates to self-evaluation of well-being have been less investigated.
Aim: The current project aims to investigate what we can learn about how children with speech sound disorders (SSDs) see their own speech intelligibility.
Method/approach: An experimental children’s visual analogue self-evaluation of intelligibility scale (CVAIS) was developed. The results from two experiments will be presented. This project has been approved by the ethics committee of the author’s academic institution. Experiment 1: Forty children with SSDs completed the scale, while their parents completed the Intelligibility in Context Scale: Hebrew (McLeod et al., 2012). Experiment 2: Thirty children with SSD complete the CVAIS as well as a children’s self-evaluation of quality of life (The Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory PedsQL 4.0, Varni et al., 2001).
Results/findings: The results from Experiment 1 show that the children rated their own speech intelligibility significantly better than their parents (p<0.001). In Experiment 2, a strong positive correlation (r=0.78) was found between children’s self-assessments of speech intelligibility and quality of life.
Conclusion: Taken together, the results show that although children are overly optimistic in rating their own intelligibility, a benefit of their positive view of their speech success is that it is positively correlated with a positive evaluation of their quality of life. Furthermore, the CVAIS appeared to be a useful and reliable tool for children’s self-assessment of speech intelligibility. In conclusion, the CVAIS is a potential research and clinical tool that gives voice to children’s views on their intelligibility and may be incorporated into measuring clinical progress from children’s point of view.
Implications for children and families: The CVAIS has the potential to enable children to express their views on their own speech intelligibility and can allow parents to view their children’s speech performance from their child’s perspective.
Implications for practitioners: The CVAIS can allow you to evaluate the effects of therapy on the child’s quality of life by tracking changes in the child’s own view of their speech intelligibility.
Keywords: children’s voices, families’ voices, communication, quantitative methods, well-being
This presentation relates to the following United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: