title: Development of The Viking Speech Scale to classify the speech of children with cerebral palsy.
abstract: Surveillance registers monitor the prevalence of cerebral palsy and the severity of resulting impairments across time and place. The motor disorders of cerebral palsy can affect children's speech production and limit their intelligibility. We describe the development of a scale to classify children's speech performance for use in cerebral palsy surveillance registers, and its reliability across raters and across time. Speech and language therapists, other healthcare professionals and parents classified the speech of 139 children with cerebral palsy (85 boys, 54 girls; mean age 6.03 years, SD 1.09) from observation and previous knowledge of the children. Another group of health professionals rated children's speech from information in their medical notes. With the exception of parents, raters reclassified children's speech at least four weeks after their initial classification. Raters were asked to rate how easy the scale was to use and how well the scale described the child's speech production using Likert scales. Inter-rater reliability was moderate to substantial (k>.58 for all comparisons). Test-retest reliability was substantial to almost perfect for all groups (k>.68). Over 74% of raters found the scale easy or very easy to use; 66% of parents and over 70% of health care professionals judged the scale to describe children's speech well or very well. We conclude that the Viking Speech Scale is a reliable tool to describe the speech performance of children with cerebral palsy, which can be applied through direct observation of children or through case note review.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University, Sir James Spence Institute, Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 4LP, UK. Electronic address: lindsay.pennington@ncl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Lindsay
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Pennington
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Virella
authors.forename: Tone
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Mjøen
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: da Graça Andrada
authors.forename: Janice
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Murray
authors.forename: Allan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Colver
authors.forename: Kate
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Himmelmann
authors.forename: Gija
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Rackauskaite
authors.forename: Andra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Greitane
authors.forename: Audrone
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Prasauskiene
authors.forename: Guro
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Andersen
authors.forename: Javier
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: de la Cruz
mesh_terms: D002547:Cerebral Palsy / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002648:Child; D004401:Dysarthria / Q000145:classification* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009048:Motor Skills / Q000502:physiology; D015588:Observer Variation; D011159:Population Surveillance / Q000379:methods; D015995:Prevalence; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*; D013070:Speech Therapy / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data
keywords: Cerebral palsy; Children; Classification; Dysarthria; Speech; Surveillance