The Turkish Application Of Stuttering Severity Instrument-4 Between 6 And 16 Years Old School Children


Thesis Type: Postgraduate

Institution Of The Thesis: Gazi University, Turkey

Approval Date: 2015

Thesis Language: Turkish

Student: Ayşe MUTLU

Supervisor: BÜLENT GÜNDÜZ

Abstract:

Characterized by impediment of speech flow and rhythm, stuttering is a communication problem. Stuttering diagnosis is carried out with monitoring, patient history and various assessment criteria. As well as defining the characteristics of stuttering severity and speech impediment, assessment criteria provide follow-up for therapy phase. Stuttering frequency and longevity, physical outcomes and speech standard should be assessed by them. Designed for the testing of the above mentioned four areas, Stuttering Severity Instrument-4 (SSI-4) is an approach that is being used worldwide. The goal of study is to create a Turkish application of SSI-4 for School Children aged between 6 and 16. For application process, the original SSI-4 is obtained. After the translation had been completed by three independent experts for Turkish application, 47 children aged between 6 and 16 are included in the study and their questionnaires were filled. Children with stuttering impediment were tested with SSI-4 and the severity of stuttering was recorded by the practitioner. The data were collected from randomly chosen 18 children who were included in test-retest method. In addition to the practitioner, they were evaluated by three independent experts, and SSI-4 Turkish application was thus performed. The Demographic Features Comparison of Results Measured with SSI-4 suggest that test results had no significant difference related to sex, history of therapy, stuttering in family and diseases and hepatitis in terms of general results and its sub-branches. The only difference was between incubators and non- incubators, where the former had significantly higher results for duration and secondary behaviors. Moreover, test suggest that general results and its sub-branches showed no significant difference in terms of the information acquired from the family for the cause of the impediment. Test-retest method, credibility studies of observers and internal consistency ratio proved that SSI-4 is found highly reliable. The highest reliability average of SSI-4 is recorded as 0.94 and maximum statistical of logical validation as 0.846. Rhythm gap from 0.73 to 0.903 is accepted as optimum for stuttering severity assessment. Being a credible stuttering assessment device for overall reliability level of SSI-4, Chronbach alfa is recorded as 0.94.