A Speech Pathology Perspective: Look into Informal Assessment and Clinical Observation
When we encounter speech pathology, some of us might picture structured assessment sessions at the table, books of standardised tests, standard scoring and percentile ranks. While formal assessments play an important role in diagnosing communication challenges, there’s another aspect of speech pathology that often goes neglected and underappreciated: informal assessments and clinical observations.
The method of using informal assessment and observation give speech pathologists a functional look at the persons’ communication abilities in a real-life situation, providing a level of insight that formal assessments may not always capture. The power of these informal tools lies in their ability to capture a holistic picture of a persons’ communication skills, making goals and ongoing intervention more effective and suitably adapted to the persons’ needs.
What can informal assessments and observations include?
1. Casual conversations with a person and their supports (i.e. family members, clinicians, support workers etc).
2. Observing the individual in their environment within daily activities, such as playing, working and/or socialising with others.
3. Obtaining language samples, recorded or written, to assist with language analysis.
4. Questionnaires administered with the individual and/or with their familiar supports who can give valuable and important information.
5. Administering informal assessments where results obtained don’t have to be matched against standardised norms.
6. Clinician engagement with the individual through conversations.
Speech pathologists have a vast array of informal assessments that they use with an individual to get an overall view of the individual’s communication skills. Whilst these informal measures are being administered during the sessions, the clinician is constantly thinking and taking all these observations in the moment. The clinician is looking at isolated aspects of communication such as articulation, fluency, sentence structure, vocal tone, social cues, word and sentence structure, use of grammar, ability to respond to questions, topic maintenance …. The list goes on! All these aspects gathered form and determine the type of communicator we are.
About the Author
Virginia is the Speech Pathology Clinical Excellence Lead at KEO Care. Her speech pathology journey started off in private practice before moving into specific clinical areas of autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability. She has worked with individuals across the lifespan from young paediatrics to adults in all areas of communication. Her previous role prior to KEO Care was in a multidisciplinary hospital setting providing speech pathology input in the areas of mental health and intellectual disability combined.
