Development of a culturally responsive Ghanaian English speech and language assessment tool

Speech and language disorders can significantly affect children’s academic and social performance in their early years in school. Accurate assessment and identification are crucial in mitigating the impact of speech and language disorders on children and their families. Assessing the speech and language skills of multilingual children is complex given the many variables that can impact upon language acquisition including languages/dialects spoken, age of acquisition and the amount and quality of exposure that children receive in each of their languages. Therefore, it is essential that speech and language assessment tools are culturally responsive and evidence based to address the complexities of multilingual development. However, no such tools currently exist for the estimated 31 million people living in Ghana. This doctoral research aimed to develop a culturally responsive formal speech and language assessment tool in Ghanaian English (GhE) to enable identification of speech and language disorders among school-age children aged 5 to 10 years old. The thesis contains five parts, which contain a total of seven publications (one book chapter and six journal articles). Section One, Background and literature review situates the researcher, presents a general introduction of the topic, identifies gaps in knowledge, outlines the research aims, presents the theoretical frameworks underpinning this doctoral research. Section one also contains the methodology and methods. A review of the literature is provided in the first two publications which are presented in this section (Book Chapter and Paper 1). Section Two, Phase 1 - Conceptualisation of the tool, introduces Phase 1 of the research, in which data were collected to conceptualise the assessment tool and to outline its rationale, purpose and the scope. This section contains the methods for Phase 1, presents an audit of existing tools, describes the co-production of content for the tool through online focus groups with Ghanaian speech-language pathologists (SLPs) (Paper 2). Section Three, Phase 2 - Operationalisation of the tool, presents how the tool, score form and examiner’s manual were developed and piloted. This section presents how the GhE tool and score form were drafted and shares perspectives of SLPs in Ghana on the prototype of the GhE speech and language assessment tool through face-to-face focus groups (Paper 3). Section three also provides details about how the tool was revised based on the feedback from Ghanaian SLPs, details how the tool was piloted (Paper 4) and describes the feedback gathered from SLPs who piloted the tool through interviews (Paper 5). Additionally, this section accounts how the tool and score form were modified based on the feedback (Paper 5) and describes the development of the examiner’s manual. Section Four, Phase 3 - Speech and language data collection and analysis, describes how the tool was used to collect and analyse the speech and language data. This section introduces Phase 3, describes the method, outlines the scoring criteria to ensure a culturally responsive practice and presents how the tool was used to collect speech and language samples to explore the preliminary distribution in a multilingual sample of 100 Ghanaian English-speaking children aged 5 to 10 years (Paper 6). Section Five, Conclusion and contributions, outlines the unique and significant contribution of this doctoral thesis to the literature. This section revisits the synopsis, outlines how this doctoral research answers the research questions, presents the theoretical and clinical implications of this doctoral research, describes the limitations and future directions of this doctoral research. The final version of the of tool (stimulus book), score form and examiner’s manual are presented as appendices to this thesis. Prior to this doctoral thesis, there were no culturally responsive, evidence-based assessment tools for Ghanaian English-speaking children. This doctoral research aimed to fill this gap by using an evidence-based methodological approach to develop a culturally appropriate GhE assessment tool, using the tool to collect speech and language data to identify speech and language disorders among multilingual school-aged children in Ghana.