The University of Western Ontario, Ontario, Canada.
The University of Western Ontario, Ontario, Canada.
J Commun Disord. 2022 May-Jun;97:106216. doi: 10.1016/j.jcomdis.2022.106216. Epub 2022 Apr 22.
Delays in vocal development are an early predictor of ongoing language difficulty for children who are deaf/hard-of-hearing (CDHH). Despite the importance of monitoring early vocal development in clinical practice, there are few suitable tools. This study aimed to identify the clinical decisions that speech-language pathologists (SLPs) most want to make when assessing vocal development and their current barriers to doing so.
58 SLPs who provide services to CDHH younger than 22 months completed a survey. The first section measured potential barriers to vocal development assessment. The second section asked SLPs to rate the importance of 15 clinical decisions they could make about vocal development.
SLPs believed assessing vocal development was important for other stakeholders, and reported they had the necessary skills and knowledge to assess vocal development. Barriers primarily related to a lack of commercially available tests. SLPs rated all 15 clinical decisions as somewhat or very important. Their top 5 decisions included a variety of assessment purposes that tests are not typically designed to support, including measuring change, differential diagnosis, and goal setting.
SLPs wish to make a number of clinical decisions when assessing vocal development in CDHH but lack access to appropriate tools to do so. Future work is needed to develop tools that are statistically equipped to fulfill these purposes. Understanding SLPs' assessment purposes will allow future tests to better map onto the clinical decisions that SLPs need to make to support CDHH and their families and facilitate implementation into clinical practice.
对于患有听力障碍的儿童（CDHH），语言困难的持续存在与早期的发声发育延迟相关。尽管在临床实践中监测早期发声发育非常重要，但目前缺乏合适的工具。本研究旨在确定言语语言病理学家（SLP）在评估发声发育时最希望做出的临床决策，以及他们目前在这方面面临的障碍。
58 名为 22 个月以下患有听力障碍的儿童提供服务的 SLP 完成了一项调查。第一部分衡量了发声发育评估的潜在障碍。第二部分要求 SLP 对他们在发声发育方面可以做出的 15 项临床决策的重要性进行评分。
SLP 认为评估发声发育对其他利益相关者很重要，并表示他们具备评估发声发育的必要技能和知识。障碍主要与缺乏商业上可用的测试有关。SLP 将所有 15 项临床决策评为有些重要或非常重要。他们的前 5 项决策包括各种评估目的，而这些目的通常不是测试设计所支持的，包括衡量变化、鉴别诊断和设定目标。
SLP 在评估 CDHH 的发声发育时希望做出多项临床决策，但缺乏适当的工具来实现这一目标。需要进一步研究开发具有统计学能力的工具来满足这些目的。了解 SLP 的评估目的将使未来的测试能够更好地与 SLP 为支持 CDHH 及其家庭所需做出的临床决策相匹配，并促进其在临床实践中的应用。
