Paediatric Automatic Phonological Analysis Tools (APAT)

Abstract

Purpose: To develop the pediatric Automatic Phonological Analysis Tools (APAT) and to estimate inter and intrajudge reliability, content validity, and concurrent validity.

Method: The APAT were constructed using Excel spreadsheets with formulas. The tools were presented to an expert panel for content validation. The corpus used in the Portuguese standardized test Teste Fonético-Fonológico – ALPE produced by 24 children with phonological delay or phonological disorder was recorded, transcribed, and then inserted into the APAT. Reliability and validity of APAT were analyzed.

Results: The APAT present strong inter- and intrajudge reliability (>97%). The content validity was also analyzed (ICC = 0.71), and concurrent validity revealed strong correlations between computerized and manual (traditional) methods.

Conclusions: The development of these tools contributes to fill existing gaps in clinical practice and research, since previously there were no valid and reliable tools/instruments for automatic phonological analysis, which allowed the analysis of different corpora.

Keywords:

• Assessment
• children
• instrument
• phonology
• reliability
• validity

Acknowledgements

The Automatic Phonological Analysis Tools (APAT) are distributed through the web platform Advanced Communication and Swallowing Assessment (ACSA) http://acsa.web.ua.pt.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no declarations of interest.

Funding

This work was partially funded by National Funds through FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, in the context of the projects UID/CEC/00127/2013 and UID/MAT/04106/2013.