Examining the Social Validity of Sketch and Speak Expository Intervention for Adolescent Students, Their Parents, and Their Speech-Language Pathologists.

PURPOSE: This study explores the social validity of an expository note-taking and oral practice intervention, Sketch and Speak, for high school students with language-related learning disabilities (LLDs), their parents, and their high school speech-language pathologists (SLPs) after instruction via telepractice. The main study is reported in Peterson and Ukrainetz (2023). This report provides an additional in-depth analysis of participant perceptions.

METHOD: Three adolescents with LLDs entering ninth grade participated in this study. Data were collected from invested groups with pre-/post-intervention social validity questionnaires and post-intervention semistructured interviews. The interviews included brief video demonstrations of student performance in treatment. For the adolescents and their parents, Likert scale responses and open-ended question responses were analyzed qualitatively through content analysis. SLP interview responses were analyzed qualitatively using thematic analysis.

RESULTS

Content analysis of the student responses indicated potential independent use of strategies in school activities. Student self-ratings of learning behaviors did not change noticeably from pre- to post-intervention. Parents spoke about improvements in their children's overall learning confidence. The SLP responses revealed three main themes about potential clinical use: buy-in, barriers to implementation, and generalizability. All three participant groups shared perceptions of increased student confidence and ownership of learned materials.

CONCLUSION

This preliminary exploration suggests that Sketch and Speak may be a socially valid and academically useful intervention for adolescents in high school, even when delivered via telepractice.