PORTUGUESE JOURNAL OF SPEECH THERAPY
RPTF | VOLUME 3 | YEAR III
Reliability within and between judges in measuring the oral diadochokinetic rate in children
Filipa Soares Macedo
ABSTRACT
Objective: The purpose of this study is to verify the within and between judges reliability in evaluating the oral diadochokinetic rate in two time points.
Methods: Five speech and language therapists evaluated audio records (via Audacity™ program and headphones SENNHEISER HD201) using five diadochokinetic tasks (three monosyllabic cycles, one disyllabic cycle and one trisyllabic cycle) in thirty-two children, on a first and a second point in time (two weeks apart). The results of the between - judge reliability was obtained by Cronbach's alpha and the within-judges reliability was obtained by class correlation coefficient.
Results: Although the results of the variable "duration" were not all great (between 0.54 and 0.98), it is clear that the variables "number of syllables" (α between 0.96 and 1) and “diadochokinetic rate" (α between 0.94 and 0.99) had an excellent quality agreement in the within and between- judges. In the within-judges evaluation were obtained mainly excellent reliable results for all variables, also presenting some results of satisfactory reliability.
Conclusion: The obtained results are contradictory in the variable "duration", but the variables " diadochokinetic rate" and the "number of cycles" observed, following the standard rules in this article, showed excellent reliability.
KEYWORDS: Speech production, Diadochokinesis, Evaluation, Speech therapy, Speech-language therapy, Reliability.