This article-based thesis was aimed at exploring the effect stuttering has on children. The first article is a meta-analysis of communication attitudes with 18 studies included. The main finding was that children who stutter reported to have more negative communication attitudes compared to the children who do not stutter. The differences between the groups increased with age, indicating that the communication attitudes of children who stutter become more negative as the children get older.
The second article presented 38 parents ratings of stuttering impact on young children using the proxy questionnaire The Overall Assessment of the Speaker’s Experience of Stuttering – Caregivers (Parents and Kindergarten Teachers) (OASES-C). The main finding was that parents perceived stuttering to affect different aspects of the children’s lives. More specifically, parents perceived stuttering to sometimes cause reactions and difficulties in communication situations. Additionally, stuttering was perceived to affect the children’s quality of life to a little extent. Finally, parents reported to be certain in their ratings of impact.
The third article addressed the agreement between mother’s, father’s, and kindergarten teacher’s (hereafter caregivers) perceptions of stuttering impact. Caregivers of 28 young children were asked to report on their perceptions of stuttering impact. The inter-rater reliability analyses revealed fair to good agreement on the different OASES-C sections. Despite overall good agreement between caregivers in their reports, qualitative analysis indicated disagreement on individual level for a few children.
Overall, this thesis contributes with novel knowledge of how young children are affected by stuttering. The main finding is that all four informant groups (children themselves, mothers, fathers and kindergarten teachers) all perceived stuttering to affect the children’s lives. Even though caregivers showed good agreement, the results support multi-informant assessment of stuttering impact in young children. This is because parents’ self-rated degree of certainty and caregivers’ agreement varied across aspects of impact.