Comparing public school teachers’ attitudes toward stuttering in Bosnia & Herzegovina and Egypt

ABSTRACT

Primarily, this study explored attitudes toward stuttering of public school teachers in two countries, Bosnia & Herzegovina (B&H) (n = 125) and Egypt (n = 58), in order to identify differences in stuttering attitudes, that may exist between the two samples. Secondarily, it compared teacher attitudes from B&H and Egypt with stuttering attitudes of non-teacher samples from these two countries as well as from teacher and non-teacher samples from other European and Middle Eastern countries. All samples utilized the Public Opinion Survey of Human Attributes – Stuttering (POSHA – S). Comparing mean ratings, teachers from B&H held significantly more positive (accurate and sensitive) stuttering attitudes than Egyptian teachers on a majority of POSHA – S items and summary scores. Lack of knowledge and geo-cultural differences between B&H and Egypt are likely major factors in explaining the differences observed. Teachers’ attitudes were no more positive than the attitudes of the public or parents in either country. They also confirmed a pattern from previous research showing more positive attitudes in European samples than Middle Eastern samples. Educating teachers about stuttering will contribute to creating a more favorable school environment for children who stutter.

KEYWORDS:

• Stuttering
• attitudes
• teachers
• POSHA – S
• Bosnia & Herzegovina
• Egypt

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the third author, upon reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In previous publications, ‘average’ sample scores for the POSHA – S have been reported as the median of all the sample means in the database in order to minimize the effects of exceptionally positive or exceptionally negative group attitudes. For the first several years after developing the database, some means of the sample means were quite different from the medians. In recent years, as the database has become much larger, the differences have become smaller. Currently, the mean difference between the means of the sample means and the medians of those sample means is – 2.25 on the – 100 to +100 scale. The difference in percentages on relevant demographic items is +1.96%. Since these differences are negligible, we have compared the B&H and Egyptian means with the mean of all the database sample means.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.