Construct validity of the focus on the outcomes of communication under six (FOCUS) total and profile scores for multilingual preschoolers: Considering functional speech skills.
Leslie E Kokotek, Barbara Jane Cunningham, Karla N Washington
PMID 35220834WHAT IT FOUND
In Jamaican Creole-English preschoolers, parent-reported communication participation scores lined up moderately with how understood children's speech was, but weakly with direct speech accuracy.
Some participation areas did not track speech skills, so they add separate information.
Key findings
01Parent-reported total communication participation scores showed a moderate relationship with parent ratings of functional speech intelligibility in Jamaican Creole and English.
02Total communication participation scores showed only minimal relationships with direct speech production accuracy in Jamaican Creole and English.
03Several participation profile scores did not relate to speech intelligibility or direct speech accuracy, including coping and emotions, social and play, and independence.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample was mainly Jamaican Creole and English simultaneous bilinguals, with 96.4% residing in Jamaica and 3.6% in New York City, so it does not cover other bilingual types or other places where Jamaican families live. The FOCUS was completed in English only because no translated and validated Jamaican Creole version was available. The statistical correction was conservative and may have missed some correlations. The final sample included 225 children considered typically developing and 30 children with reported speech concerns. This was a cross-sectional validation study, not a treatment study.
Declared interests
The supplied metadata lists Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural. The article text reports ethical approval and permissions from the University of Cincinnati, the Early Childhood Commission, Government of Jamaica, and five early learning centres, but it does not provide a separate author conflicts of interest declaration.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use the FOCUS total score as a stand-in for speech accuracy. The total score related only minimally to direct speech production scores, and several profile scores did not relate to speech intelligibility or production.