Taking Language Samples Home: Feasibility, Reliability, and Validity of Child Language Samples Conducted Remotely With Video Chat Versus In-Person

• Published in: Journal of speech, language, and hearing research Vol. 63; no. 12; pp. 3982 - 3990
• Main Authors: Manning, Brittany L., Harpole, Alexandra, Harriott, Emily M., Postolowicz, Kamila, Norton, Elizabeth S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Speech-Language-Hearing Association 01.12.2020
• Subjects: Auditory Evaluation; Between-subjects design; Chat; Child Language; Child, Preschool; Children & youth; Comparative analysis; COVID-19; Demographic aspects; Expressive Language; Families & family life; Family (Sociological Unit); Feasibility Studies; Female; Humans; Infant; Intelligibility; Interpersonal Communication; Interpersonal communication in children; Interrater Reliability; Language; Language Disorders - diagnosis; Language Tests - standards; Language usage; Longitudinal Studies; Male; Mean length of utterance; Non-Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; Outcome Measures; Pandemics; Parent Child Relationship; Parent-child relations; Raw Scores; Reliability; Reproducibility of Results; Research Methodology; Researchers; Sampling; SARS-CoV-2; Scoring; Semantics; Socioeconomic factors; Socioeconomic status; Software; Speech; Speech Acts; Speech Communication; Speech Intelligibility; Speech Language Pathology; Speech perception in children; Speech Production Measurement - methods; Speech Production Measurement - standards; Statistical sampling; Statistics; Syntax; Telemedicine; Telemedicine - methods; Telemedicine - standards; Toddlers; Transcription; Urban Areas; Validity; Video Technology; Videoconferencing; United States
• DOI: 10.1044/2020_JSLHR-20-00202
• ISSN: 1092-4388; 1558-9102

Purpose: There has been increased interest in using telepractice for involving more diverse children in research and clinical services, as well as when in-person assessment is challenging, such as during COVID-19. Little is known, however, about the feasibility, reliability, and validity of language samples when conducted via telepractice. Method: Child language samples from parent-child play were recorded either in person in the laboratory or via video chat at home, using parents' preferred commercially available software on their own device. Samples were transcribed and analyzed using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts software. Analyses compared measures between-subjects for 46 dyads who completed video chat language samples versus 16 who completed in-person samples; within-subjects analyses were conducted for a subset of 13 dyads who completed both types. Groups did not differ significantly on child age, sex, or socioeconomic status. Results: The number of usable samples and percent of utterances with intelligible audio signal did not differ significantly for in-person versus video chat language samples. Child speech and language characteristics (including mean length of utterance, type-token ratio, number of different words, grammatical errors/omissions, and child speech intelligibility) did not differ significantly between in-person and video chat methods. This was the case for between-group analyses and within-child comparisons. Furthermore, transcription reliability (conducted on a subset of samples) was high and did not differ between in-person and video chat methods. Conclusions: This study demonstrates that child language samples collected via video chat are largely comparable to in-person samples in terms of key speech and language measures. Best practices for maximizing data quality for using video chat language samples are provided.