Design and Evaluation of Psychometric Properties of the “Assessment of Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders in Preschool Children With Stuttering Questionnaire” (for Parents)

 Stuttering is not just a speech disorder. It can cause negative feelings and emotions in a person especially in children. Therefore, we need a standard tool to identify, study and measure these negative effects and then try to eliminate or reduce them. Considering the increased clinical and research needs for a valid and reliable tool to assess the negative effect of stuttering in Iran, this study aims to design and validate a questionnaire (parents form) for assessment of social/emotional /behavioral disorders in preschool children with stuttering 

This is a methodological study that was conducted in three steps in spring and summer of 2018 in Isfahan, Iran. Participants included 60 parents of preschool children with stuttering aged 3 to 5 years and 11 months (36 boys and 24 girls), who had referred to speech therapy clinics in Isfahan.  In the first stage, 10 parents received in-depth and open-ended interviews to collect information about social, emotional and behavioral disorders in children with stuttering. Afterwards, based on these information and the opinions of experts in psychology and speech therapy, the main constructs of the questionnaire were identified: "uncompromising/ hyperactive behavior", "social skills", "communication skills", "aggression", "fear", and "separation anxiety". In the second stage, in order to determine the face validity, 10 experts were interviewed face to face. In order to determine the content validity, 15 other experts were asked to examine each item according. Content validity was determined by calculating the content validity ratio (CVR), content validity index (CVI), and total content validity (Lawshe method). Confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the construct validity.  In the last step, the internal consistency was determined by calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficient, and the relaibility was determined by test-retest method and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC)

The initial version consisted of 61 items and 6 subscales. According to the experts, by merging items with overlapping concepts, the number of items were reduced to 40. In the face validity assessment stage, items were examined based on difficulty, relevance, and ambiguity. The phrases were read several times, and the opinions of experts were applied. Then, it was reviewed by two experts in Persian literature and finally was approved. The CVR and CVI  vaues were obtained 0.76 and 0.90, respectively. For its internal consistency, the Cronbach's alpha coefficient was obtained 0.89 and ICC was more than 0.7 and significant (P<0.001). For the construct validity assessed in AMOS software, the calculated X2 was 631.25. The low number of X2 indicated a good fit of the model (P<0.000).

 The designed questionnaire has acceptable validity and reliability and can be used as a reliable and valid tool for assessing social/emotional/behavioral disorders in Iranian preschool children with stuttering.