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From: Ken St. Louis
Date: 10/7/02
Time: 4:18:53 PM
Remote Name: 157.182.12.205
Hi Chris,
I just thought of some data I published in a book called "Living With Stuttering: Stories, Basics, Resources, and Hope" last year that relates to your question. It involves one aspect of a "taking stock" exercise, specifically, filling out a self-administered questionnaire which asks for ratings from 1 to 9. The last two items on the questionnaire, which I called the "Inventory of Life Perspectives and Stuttering" (ILP-S) were: "Overall, how satisfied with your life are you at this time?" and "Overall, how much did stuttering affect your answer on the previous question...?" We tested the ILP-S on 120 adults who stutter who ranged in age from 18-79 years.
The information on the last question addresses your question. On the 1 to 9 scale with 1 being "no effect," 5 being "moderate effect," and 9 being "completely determined," the percentages of the 120 adults were as follows: 1 - 35% (i.e., no effect on life satisfaction) 2 - 21% 3 - 10% 4 - 2 % 5 - 11% 6 - 4% 7 - 9% 8 - 2% 9 - 1% (i.e., completely determined life satisfaction)
It looks like slightly more than 1/4 of the stutterers thought that stuttering had at least a moderate effect on their life satisfaction, with a few reporting almost complete determination of that overall rating.
Maybe this will be of interest to you.
Ken