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From: Bob Q.
Date: 08 Oct 2009
Time: 10:10:52 -0500
Remote Name: 143.43.238.205
Hi David: OASES has not been available for nearly as long as the SSI, that may account for why is is not as widely known. The purpose of the two instruments is quite different. With OASES, we are trying to capture the speaker's experience of stuttering, the "under the surface" aspects that are very hard to see but that, for many people who stutter, comprise a large part of the "problem." You would not use the OASES in place of the SSI and believe you should measure both surface and under the surface features of stuttering if you are doing a comprehensive assessment. What makes stuttering assessment so challenging, in my opinion, is not that the measures can be "manipulated," it is that the behavior of stuttering is variable. A person who stutters can be much more fluent at some times than others or in some situations than others. I am not sure if we ever capture a "true" sample of a person's speech. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, it just means we need to be careful in how we view those samples.