Classroom-based Intervention to Change Peers’ Attitudes towards Children who Stutter: A Feasibility Study

Abstract

Stuttering is often accompanied by bullying and teasing by peers of children who stutter (CWS),especially in the adolescent years. The Classroom Communication resource (CCR) wasdeveloped to address a need for school based education programmes with focus on changinglearners’ attitudes to stuttering and CWS. The CCR is a classroom-based, teacheradministered resource presented to the class via story-telling and role-play accompanied bydiscussion. While the development of such resources are in demand, consideration should begiven to the evidence of the success of the intervention. The primary aim of this study was to determine if peers’ attitudes towards CWS change after theadministration of a classroom-based intervention, the Classroom Communication Resource(CCR). Overall changes were considered as well as changes related to gender and havingprevious exposure to a person who stutters. The secondary aim was to determine the validityand reliability of the outcomes measure, the Stuttering Resource Outcomes Measure (SROM)used to measure attitude changes in this study. The SROM is a 20 question Likert scaleparticipants use to rate their attitudes towards children who stutter.A quantitative pre-test post-test experimental design utilising randomized cluster sampling wasused. Participants included 196 Grade 7 learners from the Cape Town area. The CCR wasadministered to the experimental group only. The Stuttering Resource Outcome Measure(SROM) was administered to all participants in the experimental and control groups, pre- andpost intervention. Evidence was provided for the validity and reliability of the SROM as an outcomes measure. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the SROM scores in both the pre-testand post-test periods for both groups. Results indicated an overall positive shift in attitudestowards CWS in the experimental group and no changes in the control group over time. Females showed a statistically significant change in attitude but none was noted for males inthe experimental group. Participants with exposure to individuals who stutter had more positiveattitude scores compared to those who had no exposure. It can be concluded that an overall positive treatment effect was observed when comparing thepre-test and post-test scores on the SROM indicating the beginning of positive attitude change,after the administration of the CCR. This adds to the evidence-base for classroom-basedinterventions to manage negative attitudes towards CWS.