Measuring progress in Speech Pathology
Speech Pathology wouldn’t be the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions science, however, our profession is deeply rooted in scientific principles. Let me explain this idea further.
When we conduct an assessment of a person’s speech, language, social communication, or literacy, we may use norm-referenced assessments. These assessments allow us to collect responses from our clients and compare this to the results of other people their age. Norm-referenced assessments can give us a clear picture of what we need to prioritise in therapy and where we should expect them to be. It should be noted that norm-referenced assessments provide a measurement at one point in time, and do not provide a holistic picture. Informal assessments and client perspectives should be used at the same time.
Now that we have completed our assessment, the next step is to develop goals which reflect the assessment results as well as the priorities of the person and their parents. It is important for the client to remain at the centre of the decision-making process, and we use our assessment results as a guide to support them to formulate goals they want to pursue. It is essential for goals to be S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measureable, Achieveable, Relevant, and Time-based), because this allows us to take accurate data in sessions which can be measured at the end of the therapy period. It doesn’t matter what order the criteria are in, as long as they are all included. Here is an example of a S.M.A.R.T. goal for Johnny (7 years old) who is expected to use a variety of complex sentences at school, but can only use simple sentences:
By the end of 6 months (Time-based) Johnny will be able to independently formulate a complex sentence using the subordinating conjunction ‘because’ in a structured task to 90% accuracy (Specific + Relevant). This will be measured by reassessment of xyz norm referenced assessment (Measureable).
This S.M.A.R.T. goal is Achievable for Johnny because he already has a solid foundation of using simple sentences.
Once goals have been set, a therapy plan is developed which outlines how we will target the goal in a clear and concise way. This helps to keep us accountable and on track in a therapy block. Everyone will have a different method of collecting data in sessions, but it needs to be clear (i.e., Was the sentence produced independently? Did they receive verbal prompting? Was visual prompting provided?) so it can be transcribed into progress notes.
At the end of a therapy block, we will conduct a reassessment of the norm-referenced assessment to see if results have changed. At the same time, our data in progress notes will show us if the S.M.A.R.T. goal has been achieved or not.
Goal setting, taking data, and measuring progress are scientific principles which are applied in the field of Speech Pathology. They are a strong indicator of whether therapy has been effective or not.