Prevalence of Stuttering in Javanroud's Bilingual Students

Study of prevalence of stuttering in Iranian bilingual societies is essential for determine the effects of linguistic factors in stuttering and therapy demands in these bilingual societies. The aim of this study is to determine the prevalence of stuttering among Javanrud’s bilingual students.

In this cross- sectional, descriptive and analytical study, all of bilingual students of Javanrud’s schools were examined and in order to this purpose, teacher referral method was used for the primary screening of speech disorders at all. Essential information about speech disorders specifically stuttering had been given to teachers before this primary step. Then researcher diagnosed stuttering students based on personal interview, reading, spontaneous speech and description of serial images that tell a story in Kurdish and Persian. Data were analysed by statistical tests such as Chi-square and Logistic Regression.

Among 11425 bilingual students of Javanrud’s schools, 129 students were identified as stutterers. These findings indicated that overall prevalence of stuttering in this population is 1/13 percent. Among primary, guidance and high school students the prevalence of stuttering was 2/06, 0/87 and 0/5 percent respectively. Prevalence of stuttering among boys was 1/35 and among girls was 0/88 percent. An overall male/female ratio was 1/5. Prevalence of stuttering in primary, guidance and high school was differ from each other significantly (P<0/001). Prevalence of stuttering in male was higher than female significantly (P=0/034).

Prevalence of stuttering among Javanrood’s bilingual students was higher than accepted prevalence in monolinguals (1%). Risk of being stuttering in male was higher than female.