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From: Luc De Nil, University of Toronto
Date: 10/23/03
Time: 8:15:15 AM
Remote Name: 142.150.170.18
I think there were a number of sources:
1. the 1950-60's study by Andrews, et al in Newcastle-on-Tyne where they found an incidence rate of approximately 5% in 1000 kids and a prevalence of about 1% in older children. Also, Bloodstein summarized the data from a group of international studies, listed in his Handbook of Stuttering, which averaged out to about 1%. To the best of my knowledge, those are the two main sources for the figures of incidence and prevalence. These data seem to confirm pretty well with the data typically found in smaller studies - but it is true that to my knowledge there have not been any systematic large scale epidemiological studies done in stuttering. To my knowledge, the closest we come to such a study is one that Dr. Carla Johnson, a professor in our department, has been involved in . She is completing the last phases of a longitudinal study in which she and her colleagues followed about 140 kids from the age of 5 until they were in their mid-twenties. At the age of 5 (in the early 1980's), about 1600 children in a school board in Ottawa were tested for speech and language problems - of those, approximately 140 were found to have such problems - 9 children were assessed to have stuttering difficulties - this is a prevalence figure of about 0.5%. An interim report of her study can be found in JSLHR (june 1999).
Luc De Nil University of Toronto