Is Articulation Assessment via Synchronous Telepractice as Reliable as In-Person Assessment?


Bartamay Ş., Cangi M. E., Baba K., ÇAVDAR D., Erdem H.

American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, cilt.32, sa.3, ss.1275-1295, 2023 (SCI-Expanded, SSCI, Scopus)

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 32 Sayı: 3
  • Basım Tarihi: 2023
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1044/2023_ajslp-22-00172
  • Dergi Adı: American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, Academic Search Premier, CINAHL, Communication & Mass Media Index, EBSCO Education Source, Education Abstracts, EMBASE, Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts, MEDLINE, MLA - Modern Language Association Database, Psycinfo
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1275-1295
  • İstanbul Kent Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Purpose: This study aimed to determine whether articulation assessment via telepractice is as reliable as in-person assessment. Method: Thirty-four children aged 4-11 years with speech sound disorder (SSD) participated in the study. The Articulation Subtest (SET) of the Turkish Articulation and Phonology Test (SST) was used to assess the children’s articu[1]lation skills. The study’s procedures comprised two stages. First, in the Baseline Pilot Stage, five speech-language pathologists (SLPs; four graduate SLPs and one SLP with a PhD degree) conducted in-person assessments on seven chil[1]dren, and their agreement was examined (α for five SLPs = .950; p < .0001). In the Main Assessment Stage, four SLPs assessed 27 children synchronously on four separate days through either online (two SLPs) or in-person (the other two SLPs) clinician roles, which changed daily. Online evaluators did not use micro[1]phones and headphones to avoid any advantage. The agreement among the four raters was examined by calculating the intraclass correlation coefficient. Results: The results revealed an excellent level of agreement regarding overall assessment between online and in-person clinicians (p < .0001). All articulation manners were acceptable, good, or excellent. However, some sounds’ (α < .7 for /d/, /ɣ/, /b/; α < .8 for /p/, /ʃ/, /t/, /l/, /v/) reliability levels were relatively low compared with others. Conclusions: There may be certain restrictiveness regarding discriminating visual or auditory clues related to certain phonemes in a telepractice environ[1]ment. This restrictiveness may be related with sonority and with differentiation between minimal pairs where visual clues are limited.