The Researcher Is In

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Re: Efficacy Research

From: Vasu Parameswaran
Date: 20 Oct 2004
Time: 13:27:35 -0500
Remote Name: 151.200.90.2

Comments

Hi Anne, Thanks for your comments. If what you're saying is that researchers/therapists interested in measuring stutters are also interested, atleast equally, in measuring (e.g. by self reporting) substitutions, situation avoidances, situation "entries" (if you will), then we both agree. But I think that we are far away from measuring aspects other than stutters. You mention that evaluation criteria are infinite and that all criteria do not apply to all people who stutter. That may be the case, but that does not imply that efforts to find meaningful criteria for success are useless. I believe that research needs to ask and answer this question: can we find a set of reasonable criteria for success that applies to most stutterers? Every stutterer I imagine wants to take part in more speaking situations. Every stutterer wants to say exactly what s/he wants to say without compromising the content with substitutions and circumlocutions. Every stutterer wants to stop worrying about the next speaking situation where they may have to say their name. I don't know how to measure these aspects and I am not saying that devising criteria that depend upon these is easy - but that is where the research community needs to step in and should atleast take a first whack at the problem. My larger point is that measurement is important, but measuring only the things you can measure the *easiest* (i.e. disfluencies) is not scientific - you measure only along one dimension in a multidimensional space of severity. An important point here also is that there is *not always* a simple monotonic relationship between progress and fluency. In some therapies, you may become *more* disfluent in the early or mid stages of therapy because you are simply talking more and taking part in more and more situations (which is progress along one dimension and regress along the fluency dimension), Over time, as you work your way thru therapy you become more fluent *and* you have made progress along the other dimensions as well. Thanks again for your comments and I am glad to discuss these issues with you and others.


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