Clinical Measurement of Early Stuttering Severity: The Reliability of a 10-point Scale

The clinical use of a scale to measure the severity of early stuttering is a convenient and valid procedure, which alleviates some problems that arise when clinicians attempt stuttering-count measures with young children. This study assessed the reliability of three groups of listeners in assigning a single rating on a 10-point scale to measure the severity of stuttered speech in 5-min speech samples from young children. The three rater groups were (1) clinicians experienced in stuttering management, (2) generalist clinicians, and (3) non-clinicians. Results showed promising intra-rater agreement, inter-rater agreement, and intraclass correlations for the three groups. Further, data trends suggested that training procedures for the use of the severity scale might be a productive line of future research.