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From: Anna
Date: 18 Oct 2007
Time: 05:35:56 -0500
Remote Name: 70.22.163.191
One way to measure if your stuttering is improving is to make audio or video recordings say, every month or every few months. You would probably need to find ways to make these recordings as natural as possible and while in conversation with other people. For example, you might have a recording device beside your telephone and each time you talk on the phone, turn it on. You could ask a friend or relative if it is alright with them if you record a conversation with that person, for example. One thing you may notice is that your stuttering is different with different listeners and different speaking situations. You may find lots of other ways in which your stuttering changes due to yourself or circumstances. This is why measuring stuttering improvement is a topic that SLPs discuss all the time. How can we measure a shape-shifter such as stuttering? What do we measure? How many times do we have to measure it and for how long? Also, this kind of recording will only document what your speech sounds like (looks like on video). It will not include your thoughts and feelings. Many people who stutter say that thoughts and feelings about speech are important parts of the problem. So, this means finding ways to record your thoughts and feelings. You could make and audio- video- or written journal. I personally use a calendar to take notes on my own change issues. There is a questionnaire called Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering (OASES)and I'm wondering if you could get that from www.stutteringcenter.org. Questionnaires like this one try to put a number value on thoughts, feelings and other qualitative aspects. If the number value changes, then that is assumed to represent real life change. In thinking about a response to your question, I discovered "Letters from Sarajevo" (ISAD 2005) and a measurement called "Pawns and Origins Scale." This was a way to actually measure the content of someones personal letters! So, if you like numbers, you can describe something about your speech, take out a ruler, and pick a number on the ruler that you feel represents that speech aspect. For example, the lower values on the ruler may represent very little stuttering and the higher values represent more severe stuttering. Or, the lower values could represent small fear/avoidance reactions and the high values represent strong fear/avoidance reactions. We are not research scientists, so we do not need to get hypervigilant about this kind of measurement, in my opinion. The ruler comes in handy as a measure of progress over time. (Gordon Blood, Ph. D. talks about this in his POWERR program.) If you've made, say, 3 units of change in the positive direction and 1 unit of change in the negative, that can feel pretty good. But, not all of us think in terms of numbers. "Finding the pieces of my puzzle" (ISAD 2005) is just one story about a PWS seeing progress as discovering what kind of changes were helpful for him. I definitely recommend reading the stories of change written by other people who stutter. They will give you ideas. This summer I read The Inner Game of Tennis by W.Timothy Gallwey. He has a valuable perspective on self-improvement. The ISAD 2006 paper, "Winning the Inner Game" will explain how his ideas could translate into speech improvements for some people. Finally, let me step out of my role as an SLP and suggest that life may not be all about setting up future goals for ourselves. Maybe its about discovering the present and our place in it. "Wherever You Go, There You Are" by John Cabot Zin offers this perspective. This, I think, is where acceptance of stuttering may fit into the picture as a beginning step in the change process. I've tried to respond without the luxury of having a conversation about what you value and what your life is like, so, some of what I have said will not make sense in your situation. But I hope there is something here that will lead you on to more questions and more discovery. :) Good luck!