Tasmanian speech study - data analysis and preparation for 2026 data collection

This week I have spent a lot of time on our Tasmanian speech study (CeTasSSD). I have undertaken data analysis with Dr Nicola Ivory - which involved more data cleaning therefore beginning all of the analyses again (a very typical scenario in quantitative data analysis). I have hired a new research assistant, Emma Scanlon and worked on finalising the International Speech Screen with Helen Blake.

Emma Scanlon

Nicola Ivory

 

Data analysis about speech-language pathologists in US schools

 This morning I met with Marie Ireland and LaVae to discuss the data analysis for our nine tensions paper. 1011 responses submitted, 885 responses completed (and not duplicated) after data cleaning by Kate Crowe. Now the fun begins as we find out what they said. Marie has submitted an abstract for a conference in 2026 in Australia - hope it is accepted - so she can come and present this work.

Marie, Sharynne  and LaVae

 

 

Children Draw Playing data analysis

At the Children's Voices Centre we have a number of research opportunities where CVC affiliates to collaborate. Dr Carolyn Gregoric is leading the analysis of the Children Draw Playing data presented at the ECV2024 conference and available online in the Children Draw Playing Global Online Galleries:  https://earlychildhoodresearch.csu.domains/early-childhood-voices-conference-2024/children-draw-playing/

We have four teams who are spending 20-30 minutes per drawing to answer 60+ questions to create the data for analysis. Today our team worked for 1.5 hours and analysed three drawings from the Mongolian dataset. We had rich discussions and were impressed by what the children could convey in their drawings.

Congratulations to Belinda Downey and her team (Mehdi, Arifa, Van and Katrina G) who have already completed their analyses.

Just published: Diagnosing speech sound disorder in bilingual Vietnamese-English-speaking children: Are English-only assessments sufficient?

The following book chapter from Kate Margetson's PhD has just been published. Congratulations Kate on this important research. (P. S. Unsurprisingly, the answer to the question posed in the title is "no" - but the evidence is fascinating)

Margetson, K., McLeod, S., & Verdon, S. (2024). Diagnosing speech sound disorder in bilingual Vietnamese-English-speaking children: Are English-only assessments sufficient? In E. Babatsouli (Ed.). Multilingual acquisition and learning: A ecosystemic view to diversity. (pp. 217-245). John Benjamins Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.67.08mar 

Here is the abstract

Multilingual children suspected of having speech sound disorders (SSD) are often only assessed in English due to challenges facing speech-language pathologists (SLPs) such as inadequate resources, lack of access to multilingual SLPs or interpreters, and limited SLP knowledge and skill in assessing unfamiliar lanquages. This paper describes the speech profiles and diagnostic decision-making for four bilingual Vietnamese-English speaking children aged 4-6 years. When using English-only assessment all children were diagnosed with SSD. When assessed in English and Vietnamese, only two children were diagnosed with SSD. Many mismatches could be explained by cross-linguistic transfer and ambient phonology. These different diagnostic outcomes demonstrate that direct speech assessment in home language(s) and English is essential for accurate diagnosis of SSD in multilingual children.

Speech and teeth: Working with Caitlin in three countries

I am co-supervising Caitlin Hurley's research for her Doctorate of Clinical Dentistry that she is undertaking at the University of Western Australia. Over the past two months we have worked together in three countries: Australia, Austria and New Zealand.

Analysing speech data at The University of Auckland, NZ

VietSpeech study 2 statistics

Today Dr Cen (Audrey) Wang and I spent the day creating syntax for SPSS (a statistics program) so that we can undertake our analysis of the children's and their families' English and Vietnamese consonants, vowels and tones. We are trialing it with one family to ensure we understand the subtleties and complexities of the data before we finalize data from all of the participants.  It is exciting that we are beginning to see some results.

Sharynne, Audrey, data and SPSS

VietSpeech DEAP and VSA data

Data analysis meeting - Waiting for Speech Pathology Grant

Today our NSW Health Translational Research Grant Scheme team met to discuss the first phase of data analysis with our statisticians (Dr Nicola Ivory and Dr Audrey Wang). It was an exciting meeting as we were able to see changes over time for our different interventions.  We will be presenting the data at the Speech Pathology Australia National Conference in June. Today's participants were in Bathurst, Dubbo, Albury, and Shepparton meeting via video conference.

Nina and Kate in Dubbo (in front of their vocabulary wall)

Nicola, Nicole, Emily, Audrey, Sharynne and Katrina (on screen)

Katrina, Audrey and Emily in Bathurst

NSW Health Translational Research Grant data collection has finished

Today data collection for the NSW Health Translational Research Grant finished. Katrina Rohr from Bathurst Community Health centre just sent 52,173 cells of data collected by the research team across 2 sites from 121 children over 4 stages of our randomised controlled trial. The data will now be cleaned then analysed. It is an exciting stage of research. What have we found?

Phon: Workshops and meetings

As part of the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association conference, Yvan Rose ran two workshops on Phon, an extensive computerized speech analysis tool. Sarah Masso and I attended the workshops, and also were able to meet with Yvan and Greg Hedlund about future planning for Phon to make this comprehensive program more accessible for speech-language pathologists. See earlier posts about Phon here.

Sarah Masso, Greg Hedlund and Yvan Rose

A/Prof Yvan Rose presenting the Phon workshop