Communication and Collaboration between Parents and Speech Language Pathlogists

Thank you for your interest in our research study. We are interested in parents’ perspective on the communication and collaboration skills of speech language pathologists (SLPs). Our goal is to help speech language pathologists learn effective communication and collaboration skills for working with parents.

In this research project, we will ask parents of children who use AAC to

• watch 4 short videos of conversations between SLPs and parents,

• answer a small number of questions about the communication and collaboration skills of the SLP that they observe.

The whole research activity (including watching the videos and answering the questions) will take approximately 20 minutes.

Parents will watch the videos, and answer the questions, using the internet (a conference system called Skype). What parents say will be recorded and transcribed, but we will keep no identifying information (i.e., we will not record the parent's name on their data). The use of Skype requires a free download of software. Parents will be provided with instructions if they are not familiar with this software.

Parents will be paid $35 for their participation. We will review the responses we receive from parents, and we will use this information to improve the training that we provide for speech language pathologists. We also will share the results of this research with other educational programs – again, no identifying information will be used in any presentation or publication activity.

Thank you for your interest, please email Jenn Thistle at jqt5124@psu.edu for additional information if you are interested in participating in this study.

This research project has been reviewed and approved by the Office of Research Protection at Penn State University.