Criterion Validity of Speech Intelligibility Rating-Scale Procedures for the Hearing-Impaired Population

Abstract

The criterion validity and reliability of two popular rating-scale procedures for the assessment of the contextual speech intelligibility of hearing-impaired individuals (The NTID Scales) were studied under clinically typical conditions of test administration and evaluation. The criterion measure was a write-down procedure based on subjects' readings of sentence lists chosen from The CID Everyday Sentence lists. Although the results revealed generally high overall validity and reliability coefficients for the two scales, a close examination of the distribution of estimation error over the full range of rating-scale values revealed gross violations of measurement prediction within the clinically most frequent midrange of speech intelligibility. The results indicate that the rating-scale procedure significantly compromises clinical and research classification of an individual's speech intelligibility and that write-down procedures may provide a viable and significantly more accurate alternative for speech intelligibility assessment.

An intelligibility assessment of toddlers with cleft lip and palate who received and did not receive presurgical infant orthopedic treatment

“…We agree with Samar and Metz (1988) that "the write-down paradigm, arguably, has clear face validity with respect to our current intuitions of the necessary properties of a suitable speech intelligibility construct." (p. 307) The main disadvantage of a write-down method, however, is that it is time consuming.…”

“…Curvilinearity was present in the correlational data, suggesting that the association was not consistent over the entire intelligibility range. Samar and Metz (1988) also investigated the validity and reliability of this rating scale procedure in a group of hearing-impaired speakers. They determined the criterion validity by calculating the correlation between the write-down scores and the ratings.…”

Speech Intelligibility of Pediatric Cochlear Implant Recipients With 7 Years of Device Experience

“…The major advantage of the rating-scale procedure is that intelligibility scores can be obtained promptly, but it is difficult for the examiner to verify exactly what the listener understood. Rating-scale intelligibility scores, more than write-down scores, also tend to be affected by nonauditory factors such as listener expectations and personality traits (Cox et al, 1991;Samar & Metz, 1988).…”

“…The major advantage of the rating-scale procedure is that intelligibility scores can be obtained promptly, but it is difficult for the examiner to verify exactly what the listener understood. Rating-scale intelligibility scores, more than write-down scores, also tend to be affected by nonauditory factors such as listener expectations and personality traits (Cox et al, 1991;Samar & Metz, 1988).All in all, compared to the write-down procedure, the rating-scale procedure is more efficient because it requires less time and effort to obtain an intelligibility score. Moreover, a strong relation was found between the write-down and rating-scale intelligibility scores.…”

“…We expected that, as a group, these participants would demonstrate greater speech intelligibility than that demonstrated in previous studies. Given that both procedures have their pros and cons (Cox, Alexander, & Rivera, 1991;Samar & Metz, 1988), a secondary purpose of the study was to examine the relation between the write-down intelligibility scores based on the obtained rating-scale intelligibility scores. Finally, with equivalent length of CI experience, regression models were derived based on CI participants' performance.…”