Honors Theses

Date of Award

Spring 5-8-2022

Document Type

Undergraduate Thesis

Department

Communication Sciences and Disorders

First Advisor

Rebecca Lowe

Second Advisor

Ying Hao

Third Advisor

Vishakha Rawool

Relational Format

Dissertation/Thesis

Abstract

Purpose

Hearing loss can affect several aspects of an adolescent’s life, particularly their self-advocacy skills and ability to communicate their needs in the classroom. Literature shows that adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18 years have a prevalence of hearing loss between 14.9 percent and 19.5 percent (Shargorodsky et al., 2010). Therefore, early identification and intervention of hearing loss are necessary to reduce the adverse effects on the development of cognition, verbal communication skills, and self-advocacy skills (Michael & Zidan, 2018). This research study aimed to determine if the implementation of the SCRIPT program changes the communication repair behavior in adolescents as measured by the LIFE-R student and teacher appraisals and the SAID teacher checklist.

Method

A single case study method was utilized for six adolescents throughout this study to gather detailed information on the communication repair behavior as the SCRIPT program was implemented. Using a pre-and post-test research design, researchers gathered data on five of the adolescents’ self-advocacy skills and communication repair strategies used in listening situations in the classroom. The SCRIPT program was implemented in-person and remotely in a counterbalanced format to teach self-advocacy and communication repair skills through the study. The participant’s language samples were transcribed verbatim using CLAN and coded using CLAN’s frequency function to minimize errors in the results. Results between the pre-and post-test measures were compared and interpreted.

Results

Regarding the LIFE-R teacher appraisals, the scores were inconsistent in improvement after implementing the SCRIPT program. The LIFE-R student appraisal scores rarely improved over the study. Regarding the SAID teacher checklist, four students showed improvement with more assertive communication styles, independent functions with their HATs, and communication repair strategies during communication breakdowns. According to the language samples, each student improved using repair strategies, particularly repetition and nonverbal strategies.

Conclusion

The research results provide valuable insight into the outcome of SCRIPT intervention in adolescents. Researchers predicted that the adolescent’s self-advocacy development and communication repair behavior would improve with the SCRIPT implementation, and the results indicated some increase in self-advocacy skills among the participants and an improvement in utilization of communication repair strategies.

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