title: What do people with aphasia want to be able to say? A content analysis of words identified as personally relevant by people with aphasia.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Word finding is a common difficulty for people with aphasia. Targeting words that are relevant to the individual could maximise the usefulness and impact of word finding therapy.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To provide insights into words that people with aphasia perceive to be personally relevant.
  
  
  METHODS
  100 people with aphasia were each asked to identify 100 words that would be particularly important for them to be able to say. Two speech and language therapist researchers conducted a quantitative content analysis of the words selected. The words were coded into a framework of topics and subtopics. The frequency with which different words and topics were selected was then calculated.
  
  
  RESULTS
  100 participants representing 20 areas of the United Kingdom ranged in age from 23 to 85 years. Word finding difficulties ranged from mild to severe. The sample of 9999 words selected for practice included 3095 different words in 27 topics. The majority of words selected (79.4%) were from the topics 'food and drink' (30.6%), 'nature and gardening' (10.3%), 'entertainment' (9.4%), 'places' (7.3%), 'people' (6.7%), 'house' (6.5%), 'clothes' (5.2%) and 'travel' (3.5%). The 100 words types chosen with the greatest frequency were identified. These account for 27 percent of the 9999 words chosen by the participants.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Personally relevant vocabulary is unique to each individual and is likely to contain specific or specialist words for which material needs to be individually prepared. However there is some commonality in the words chosen by people with aphasia. This could inform pre-prepared materials for use in word finding therapy from which personally relevant words could be selected for practice.
authors.affiliation: School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom.|Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Sheffield, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Rebecca
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2335-7104
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Palmer
authors.affiliation: Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Sheffield, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Helen
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hughes
authors.affiliation: School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Tim
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Chater
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001037:Aphasia / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000628:therapy*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007808:Language Therapy / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D006113:United Kingdom / Q000453:epidemiology; D014825:Vocabulary; D055815:Young Adult