Speech Situations Checklist

The revised Speech Situation Checklist © (Brutten, 2003), which is part of the Behavior Assessment Battery (Brutten & Vanryckeghem, 2003), is made up of two independent sections. The first of these, SSC-ER serves to assess the amount of emotional reaction, if any, that a child reportedly experiences when encountering each of 55 speech situations. The other section, SSC-SD, measures the extent to which speech disruption is reported relative to these very same speech situations. On the SSC-ER, the child is asked to indicate the extent to which each of the described situations currently causes a fearful feeling. In this regard, the child is provided with a five-point scale that ranges from 'not afraid' to 'very much afraid'. In the second part of this test procedure, the SSC-SD, children are being asked to report on the degree of difficulty, if any, that they have with their speech (the same sound or word comes out over and over again; sounds are stretched out, hard to get out or will not come out). They are asked about fluency failures relative to the very same situations that are found in the ER section of the SSC. This time the possible responses range from 'no trouble' (score of 1) to 'very much trouble' (score of 5) speaking. A total test score is obtained for each section separately by adding together the 1 to 5 ratings to each of the test procedure's items. The score can thus range from a low of 55 to a maximum of 275.