Speech and language therapists' insights into severity of speech sound disorders in children for developing the speech sound disorder severity construct.
Anniek van Doornik, Marlies Welbie, Sharynne McLeod and 2 others
PMID 40139963WHAT IT FOUND
Therapists do not use a single score to judge speech sound disorder severity.
They weigh three main factors: how accurate the speech is, how intelligible it is in daily life, and how much the child feels burdened by their own speech.
Key findings
01Severity is determined by three main factors: speech accuracy, the child's perception of impact, and intelligibility in communication.
02Therapists rely on subjective clinical judgment and comparison with typical development rather than standardized metrics like Percentage of Consonants Correct.
03The child's own emotional burden and perception of their speech are considered a primary severity factor, distinct from objective accuracy.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study reflects the views of therapists in the Netherlands, where the ICF framework is heavily integrated into training, which may bias the findings toward that specific model. The proposed construct (SSDSC) has not been tested or validated in practice; it is a theoretical model derived from interviews. The sample was recruited via convenience and expert opinion sampling, which may not represent all therapists.
Declared interests
The authors declared no financial or non-financial conflicts of interest. However, one author is a co-author of the Intelligibility in Context Scale, a tool mentioned in the study.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat this new 'Speech Sound Disorder Severity Construct' as a validated diagnostic tool. It is a framework derived from therapists' opinions and has not been tested for reliability or accuracy in real-world clinical settings.