Abstract
An observational rating scale was developed for rating the conversational attitude and supporting skills of the conversation partners who communicate with persons with aphasia. Further, we evaluated the reliability and the validity of the rating scale. First, via a brainstorming session, three speech-language therapists listed the items that they believed were necessary as conversational attitudes and supporting skills of the conversation partners. Next, two other speech-language therapists conceptualized the items, referring to the KJ method, to create a rating-scale. In order to evaluate the reliability and validity, three other speech-language therapists rated the conversation videos. In addition to the internal consistency and content validity of the rating scale, its reliability was evaluated using intra-rater and inter-rater reliabilities of the scale scores. The criterion validity was calculated using, as an external criterion, the information transmission rate and the ranking of the conversation partners rated by persons with aphasia based on the“ease of speaking”in free conversations. The intraclass correlation coefficient of the inter-rater reliability and the test-retest reliability both exhibited a highly positive correlation. The correlation coefficient of the criterion validity demonstrated a nearly significant correlation. Thus, we concluded that this rating scale had moderate reliability and validity.
