Development and preliminary psychometric analysis of a quick screening form for referrals of individuals with neurogenic communication disorders to speech-language pathologists by laypersons

Abstract

Development and preliminary psychometric analysis of a quick screening form for referrals of individuals with neurogenic communication disorders to speechlanguage pathologists by laypersons,Purpose: The study aimed at developing and determining the preliminary reliability and validity of a new screening form for use by laypersons to refer individuals with neurogenic communication disorders to speech-language pathologists. Methods: Thirty-two native Cantonese speakers with neurogenic communication disorders were tested with the proposed screening form by fourteen volunteer raters and well-established speech and language tests for aphasia, dysarthria and apraxia of speech (AOS) by ten speech-language pathology students. Results: Statistical analyses showed that the internal consistency and inter-rater reliability were high in all the tasks for aphasia and most of the tasks for dysarthria and AOS of the proposed screening form. It was further identified that some of the tasks for aphasia, dysarthria, and AOS would be valid for laypersons to identify individuals with communications disorders. Conclusions: The results indicated that the tasks for screening aphasia, dysarthria, and AOS should be carefully selected so that untrained laypersons would be able to make correct judgements. Further investigations involving a larger sample size are needed to determine areas to enhance the sensitivity and discriminating power of the current screener to be used by laypersons without a clinical background.