Swedish Test of Intelligibility for Children (STI-CH) – Validity and reliability of a computer-mediated single word intelligibility test for children

Abstract

The aim of this study was twofold: first, to describe a new Swedish intelligibility test (Swedish Test of Intelligibility for Children, STI-CH) and second to evaluate its validity and reliability. STI-CH is based on the repetition of single words. Ten children with a speech-sound disorder (4:6–8:3 years of age, mean = 6.0 years) and 10 children with typical speech and language development (4:8–7:4 years of age, mean = 5.9 years) were included. Twenty speech-language pathology students served as listeners. Intra-judge reliability was high (r > 0.92), as was the intra-class correlation of inter-judge reliability (0.97). In terms of validity, there was a significant difference in STI-CH scores between the two groups, and the scores correlated statistically significantly with the Percentage of Consonants Correct (r = 0.94) and with intelligibility in spontaneous speech (r = 0.85). To sum up, the results indicate that STI-CH could be an option for the assessment of intelligibility in Swedish-speaking children, and that the principles used in the development of the test could be of use in the design of intelligibility tests in languages other than Swedish.

Keywords:

• Assessment
• child
• intelligibility
• speech
• speech disorders

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the SLPs Cornelia Case, Gunilla Forsberg and Annemo Uppman and Professor Stefan Stenfelt for providing the word bank, research engineer Jonas Lindh for help with the software and all the SLP students for valuable help with transcription of the speech samples.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no declarations of interest.

This study has, in part, been supported by the Swedish Research Council. The responsibility for the content of this article lies with the authors.