How Parental Reactions Differ Toward Early Stuttering: A Turkish Validation Study of the Responses to Speech Disfluency Scale

Abstract

Objective: The identification of parental reactions toward stuttering is significant in the assessment and intervention process of fluency disorders. Despite a growing body of research including parents of children who stutter, there is still a lack of instruments that assess parental reactions. This study aims to adapt the Responses to Speech Disfluency Scale into Turkish to make it available for use among clinicians including speech and language therapists, psychiatrists, and allied health professionals working with children who stutter. Methods: The sample included 49 mothers and 51 fathers (100 in total) who had children who stutter. The mean age values of mothers and fathers were 35.14 (standard deviation = 5.33) and 38.64 (standard deviation = 5.50) years, and their children who stutter were 67.46 months (standard deviation = 16.91). In the adaptation process of Responses to Speech Disfluency Scale, various validity and reliability analyses were conducted. The data were analyzed through Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. Results: The findings showed that the reactions in the emotional domain were significantly greater among mothers than fathers (P < .05). There was a positive and significant correlation between domain and total scale scores (P < .001 for all domains). The Cronbach alpha and test–retest reliability values of the total scale demonstrated excellent reliability. Conclusion: The psychometric properties of the Turkish version of the scale show that it is linguistically and culturally appropriate to be used within clinical practice.