title: Unscheduled telephone calls to measure percent syllables stuttered during clinical trials.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Researchers have used unscheduled telephone calls for many years during clinical trials to measure adult stuttering severity before and after treatment. Because variability is a hallmark of stuttering severity with adults, it is questionable whether an unscheduled telephone call is truly representative of their everyday speech.
  
  
  METHODS
  The authors studied the speech of 9 men and 1 woman for a 12-hr day during different speaking activities. On that day and 1 week prior to that day, participants received an unscheduled 10-min telephone call from a person unknown to them. The authors compared the percent syllables stuttered (%SS) for the unscheduled telephone call on the day to the %SS of the unscheduled telephone call 1 week prior to the day and to the %SS during the entire day.
  
  
  RESULTS
  No significant differences were found, and all confidence intervals with t tests included 0. The concordance correlation test also showed a strong positive correlation between %SS scores for the entire day and for the unscheduled 10-min telephone call.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The authors conclude that there is no reason to doubt that 10-min unscheduled telephone calls are a representative speech sample for %SS during clinical trials of stuttering treatments.
authors.affiliation: Correspondence to Mark Onslow: mark.onslow@sydney.edu.au.
authors.forename: Hamid
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Karimi
authors.forename: Sue
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: O'Brian
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Onslow
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.forename: Ross
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Menzies
authors.forename: Ann
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Packman
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D015928:Cognitive Behavioral Therapy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012931:Social Environment; D013060:Speech; D013068:Speech Production Measurement / Q000379:methods*; D013070:Speech Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D013342:Stuttering / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000628:therapy*; D013689:Telephone; D016896:Treatment Outcome
keywords: adult; outcome measure; percent syllables stuttered; stuttering; telephone call