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Quality of life and language difficulties in adolescents and young adults: Words for Wellbeing

In this project, we examine whether there is a relationship between physical and mental health and quality of life in adolescents and young adults who have language difficulties.

Mixed alphabet letters falling

Language and communication difficulties can have a range of consequences in everyday life. (Photo / Unsplash)

About the project

We aim to adapt a vocabulary assessment tool to Norwegian and try it out on different groups of adolescents and young adults with and without language impairments. Furthermore, we will investigate whether language impairments affect young people’s physical health, mental health, and quality of life.

Background

Language and communication difficulties can lead to challenges with social functioning, learning and being able to do everyday things such as following a recipe, reading an instruction manual or a letter from the government.

Adolescents and young adults who have language and communication difficulties are consequently at greater risk of a number of negative developmental outcomes. They are over-represented among students who drop out of upper secondary school, they have a greater risk of mental health problems, they are over-represented among young people in contact with the judicial system and have a greater risk of being on disability pension.

There are several and complex reasons why adolescents and young adults may have difficulties with language and communication, such as developmental language disorders, hearing loss or because they are minority language users and therefore have challenges with the language spoken around them at school or in the workplace.

In order to provide proper help to these people, good language assessment tools are needed. As of today, there are no language tests for this age group in Norwegian.

Purpose

  • Adapting and piloting a receptive vocabulary assessment tool to Norwegian.
  • Investigate whether there is a connection between language skills and quality of life for different participant groups.

Financing

Stiftelsen Dam

Cooperation

The project is a collaboration between the University of Oslo and OsloMet. The project also collaborates with Dysleksi Norge and Pearson Scandinavia.

Published Dec. 13, 2023 10:26 AM - Last modified Dec. 13, 2023 1:19 PM

Contact

Photo of the Associate Professor
Ingeborg Sophie Ribu,
 Associate Professor at OsloMet and
Christiane Haukedal,
Associate Professor at the Department of Special Needs Education, UiO (Photo: Siv Tonje Sperati Håkensen)