Exploring an Online Support Group Devoted to Parents of Children with Speech Impairments: A Qualitative Multiple Case Study

Parents of speech impaired children have explicit issues to deal with in their quest for the remediation of their child’s disability. The theoretical framework of this qualitative multiple case study emerged from the review of both the literature and Internet resources and guided the researcher in examining these five variables: (1) being a parent of a child with the disability of SI could be stressful; (2) parents of children with disabilities have been helped by joining groups for support; (3) support groups can be facilitated online; (4) there are online support groups for parents of children with various disabilities; and, (5) however, an Internet search did not locate an interactive online support groups (OSG) for parents of children with SI. Utilizing quantitative methodology, an online questionnaire was chosen as a vehicle for data collection for this multiple case study. For this study, a sample of speech therapy personnel was located with the assistance of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and invited to complete an online computer assisted self-administered interview (CASI) questionnaire. Across the span of answers to questions posed by the online survey in the form of a questionnaire a hierarchy emerged. Parents’ ability to locate information was deemed paramount by respondents. This was followed by a quest for tangible assistance. The third area was the opportunity to network with other parents of SI children. These themes were universal in the respondents’ opinions regardless of type of question (open-ended, ranking, or Likert) posed by the researcher. An unanticipated theme emerged. The author of the present study coined that theme as ‘Consumer Alert’. It focused around a concern by the respondents that parents of SI children were given accurate information. An interested party, such as a parent or a SLP, who may want to develop an OSG for parents of SI children are invited to use the results of this study as a possible source of information for the construction of such a website. Additionally, future researchers may consider expanding this study by replicating the data collection process with a sample of parents of children with diagnosed or suspected SI