Multilingual Children's Speech
The Speech Participation and Activity Assessment of Children (SPAA-C) is designed to support professionals and researchers to understand the lives of children and other important people who surround them.
(Pronounced /spa si/ "spa see")
It includes questions for the children themselves, their siblings, friends, parents, teachers and others involved in their daily lives. Most questions can be answered in an interview format; however, there is one section for children to indicate their response by drawing.
SPAA-C originally was developed to provide speech-language pathologists with information about children with speech sound disorders but may also be relevant for considering children's communication more broadly (e.g., with children who are multilingual, children who stutter, children who have language disorders, children with hearing loss). The questions can be adapted to suit the context.
The SPAA-C is free and downloadable from the links below. Information about the creation of the SPAA-C can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14417040410001669516
The SPAA-C has been translated into a number of languages (see below) and has been used in research and practice in different countries. If you would like to be involved in translating, or researching using the SPAA-C, please contact us.
| Language | SPAA-C | Documents (.pdf) | Translators* |
|---|---|---|---|
| Afrikaans | Assessering van Spraakdeelname en Aktiwiteite van Kinders | Brenda Louw, Ph.D., East Tennessee State University, USA and Juan Bornman, Ph.D., Karin Van Niekerk, Enid Moolman, University of Pretoria, South Africa | |
| English | Speech Participation and Activity Assessment of Children | Sharynne McLeod, Ph.D., Charles Sturt University, Australia | |
| German (Deutsch) |
| Sandra Neumann, Ph.D. | |
| Jamaican Creole (Jamiekan) | Meja fi Omoch Pikni taak an tek paat ina tingz wid ada Piipl | Karla N. Washington, PhD, University of Toronto, Canada, Susanna Blagrove Campbell, BA, University of the West Indies, Jamaica, Joseph Farquharson, PhD, University of the West Indies, Jamaica | |
| Polish (Polski) | Ocena kategorii Aktywności i Uczestniczenia związanych z mową u dzieci | Agata Trębacz-Ritter Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland | |
| Turkish (Türkçe) | Konuşma Katılımı ve Etkinliği Değerlendirmesi |
| Seyhun Topbaş, Ph.D. |
| Vietnamese (Tiếng Việt) | Đánh giá Hoạt động và Sự tham gia liên quan đến lời nói của trẻ em: Tiếng Việt | Ben Phạm, Charles Sturt University, Australia; Hanoi National University of Education, Viet Nam |
*These translations have not been back translated by a professional translation company unless specified.
The SPAA-C was developed by Sharynne McLeod in conjunction with 120 participants in the master class at the Speech Pathology Australia National Conference, Hobart (May, 2003) and the 100 participants in the Speech Pathology Australia Professional Development workshop, Perth (June, 2003).
It originally was published as an appendix to the following article: McLeod, S. (2004). Speech pathologists' application of the ICF to children with speech impairment. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 6(1), 75-81.
Speech Pathology Australia (Gail Mulcair, CEO) has given permission for the SPAA-C and its translations to be shared on the Multilingual Children's Speech website.
Thank you to the researchers and speech-language pathologists who have used and translated the SPAA-C.
Barr, J., McLeod, S., & Daniel, G. (2008). Siblings of children with speech impairment: Cavalry on the hill. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 39, 21-32.