Australian speech pathology services and the non-native speaker of English: a national survey

Master of EducationA national Australia wide mail survey was conducted of 400 systematically selected, practising speech pathologists who were members of the Australian Association of Speech and Hearing. The aim of the survey was to describe the occurrence and nature of speech pathology services provided for the non-native speaker of English (N.N.E.S.) during the period January 1 to December 31, 1986. A modified version of the Total Design of Method (Dillman, 1984) was followed. The Total Design Method involved implementation of a set of procedures consisting of one initial contact for all questionnaire participants and up to two follow-up contacts for non-respondents. Using these procedures, an 87 percent response rate was achieved. The findings indicated that: 1. Sixty-nine (68.9) percent of the sample population of speech pathologists had seen one to two different N.N.E.S. clients in their clinics. 2. The speech pathologists (31.2 percent) who had not seen N.N.E.S. reported overwhelmingly that there had been no referrals of N.N.E.S. to their clinic. 3. The incidence of referral of N.N.E.S. clients for each state was related to the number of practising speech pathologists in the state and not to the proportion of N.N.E.S. in that state. 4. N.N.E.S. clients were represented predominantly by the age groups 0-9 and 55 and over. 5. The languages spoken most often by N.N.E.S clients were Italian, Greek and Chinese languages (Cantonese and Mandarin). 6. Interpreters were used by 36 percent of speech pathologists. 7. One in every three speech pathologists who provided services to N.N.E.S. clients spoke a second language. However, these second languages were used infrequently by the speech pathologist in the clinical setting. 8. Sixty-four (64.2) percent of speech pathologists were supportive of the notion that a greater amount of information should be included in undergraduate and continuing education programs in all aspects relating to bilingual/bicultural issues