Psychometric Properties of Persian Version of Intelligibility Context Scale in Persian-Speaking Children

Abstract

Background and Aims The intelligibility context scale (ICS) is the first screening tool for the intelligibility of speech. The ICS assesses parents’ perceptions of their child’s speech clarity in real situations when talking with different people and has been adapted into more than 60 languages. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the ICS-Persian in preschool Persian-speaking children. Methods This is a validation and instrumentation research study. The parents of 118 children aged 4 to 6 years with and without speech sound disorders (SSD) from 10 kindergartens in Isfahan were recruited to the study through a clustered randomized sampling method. A speech therapist evaluated all children to confirm their overall health. Their parents completed the ICS-Persian, and the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ) was completed for each child to determine the convergent validity of the ICS. In the test-retest study, 54 parents re-filled the ICS-Persian after 3 weeks. Statistical methods included Cronbach’s alpha coefficients, Pearson correlation, intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), and paired t-test. Results Internal consistency and test-retest values were good and calculated as 0.89 and 0.82, respectively. The mean scores of children with and without SSD were statistically significant (P0.001). In addition, a significantly higher score obsereved in children who spoke similarly to their peers and children who did not talk identically on the ASQ, documenting good construct validity. Conclusion The ISC-Persian showed good psychometric properties for the population of persian-speaking preschool children. Iranian speech therapist can reliably use it with persian-speaking children for clinical and research purposes.