A psychometric investigation of speech, language and cognitive communicative rating scales for adults with acquired neurogenic communication disorders in the acute hospital setting

Speech-language pathologists working in hospitals have limited opportunities to identify patients with newly acquired communication related impairments and to support patients with communication related impairments to communicate their healthcare needs. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health conceptualizes these different roles as within the Body Functions and Structures component and within the Activities and Participation component respectively. The Inpatient Functional Communication Interview (IFCI) is a measure of how well a patient is able to communicate their healthcare needs in hospital. This study investigated whether a speech-language pathologist could conduct the IFCI and have sufficient information to rate a patient's level of communication related impairments, on newly developed speech, language and cognitive communicative rating scales (named the OHW scales) in a reliable and valid way. This research indicated that the OHW scales had strong and significant concurrent criterion validity and significant interrater reliability. However the most important aspect of interrater reliability for the OHW scales was interrater agreement. Interrater agreement was moderately high for the OHW speech and cognitive communicative scales but low for the OHW language scale. Interrater agreement on the OHW language scale requires further investigation.