Developing an Arabic speech intelligibility test for adolescents and adults

Abstract

ObjectivesThe improvement of speech intelligibility of many patients is one of the primary aims of the therapy of communication disorders. The standard evaluations lack an Arabic test to measure speech intelligibility among adolescents and adults.Participants and methodsThis study was conducted on 200 participants with an age range from 12 to 60 years who can read Arabic. All participants were randomly selected from the outpatient clinic of phoniatrics from five speech disorders affecting speech intelligibility. Each participant included in the study was subjected to two evaluations: a subjective rating of the participant’s speech intelligibility and the developed Arabic speech intelligibility test, which is meant to be an objective measure.ResultsThe results showed highly significant correlation between the scores of the Arabic speech intelligibility test and the average scores of the raters.ConclusionThe developed test proved to be valid and reliable for measuring speech intelligibility and could be categorically classified into ranges of severity.