Craig Ashley, Hancock Karen, Tran Yvonne, Craig Magali
Department of Health Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney, Broadway, New South Wales, Australia.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2003 Oct;46(5):1197-206. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2003/093).
The question of whether people who stutter are generally more anxious than people who do not stutter has not yet been resolved. One major methodological barrier to determining whether differences exist has been the type of stuttering sample used. Studies investigating anxiety levels of those who stutter have mostly assessed people referred to stuttering therapy clinics, which is arguably a biased sample. To date, no studies have been published that have measured the anxiety levels of people who stutter in the community using random selection procedures. Such a sample is more likely to be representative of the population of people who stutter. The present study involved a random selection and telephone interview of people in 4,689 households. The telephone respondent was given a description of stuttering and asked if any person living in their household stuttered. If yes, a number of corroborative questions were asked, and permission was requested to tape the speech of the person believed to stutter over the telephone. A definite case of stuttering was based on (a) a positive detection of stuttering from the tape and (b) at least one of the corroborative questions supporting the diagnosis. A total of 87 people were identified as definite cases of stuttering across all ages, and 63 participants who were 15 years or older completed a trait anxiety questionnaire over the telephone. Mean trait anxiety levels were significantly higher than levels generally found in society, though differences were not large. Implications of these results are discussed.
口吃者是否总体上比不口吃者更焦虑这一问题尚未得到解决。确定是否存在差异的一个主要方法障碍是所使用的口吃样本类型。调查口吃者焦虑水平的研究大多评估的是被转介到口吃治疗诊所的人，这可以说是一个有偏差的样本。迄今为止，尚未发表过使用随机抽样程序来测量社区中口吃者焦虑水平的研究。这样的样本更有可能代表口吃人群。本研究涉及对4689户家庭中的人员进行随机抽样和电话访谈。电话受访者会收到一份关于口吃的描述，并被问及他们家中是否有口吃者。如果回答是肯定的，会问一些确证性问题，并请求允许录制被认为口吃者的电话语音。确诊口吃的病例基于：（a）从录音中阳性检测出口吃，以及（b）至少有一个确证性问题支持该诊断。在所有年龄段中，总共87人被确定为确诊的口吃病例，63名15岁及以上的参与者通过电话完成了一份特质焦虑问卷。特质焦虑的平均水平显著高于社会普遍水平，不过差异不大。本文讨论了这些结果的意义。
