A Comparison of Three Speech Intelligibility Measures for Deaf Students

The speech intelligibility of 21 severely to profoundly hearing-impaired adolescents representing a broad range of speaking proficiency was measured by using each of three assessment procedures: The National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) rating scale, the Speech Intelligibility Evaluation (Monsen, 1981), and the Speech Intelligibility Test for Deaf Children (Magner, 1980). The three measures were correlated at better than the 1% level of significance. Interjudge reliability was examined for the NTID scale and the Magner test. For both procedures the greatest variability in between-rater judgments was observed for intelligibilities in the middle of the range. The practical advantages and disadvantages of each procedure are discussed and recommendations made for their use.