Author: Rylee Atkins Major: Communication Sciences and Disorders
Rylee shows off her Honors Symposium Poster that won First place
Over the course of the 2021 spring grant term, I worked alongside my honors mentor, Dr. Lisa Bowers, to complete my honors thesis. With the help of an incredible committee, Dr. Samantha Robinson and Dr. Kristi Perryman, I was able to complete a project that I am proud of and that will hopefully make a lasting impact. The title of my research is called Language Abilities of Children who Qualify for Both Speech Therapy and Play Therapy.
During this spring grant term, I was able with the help of my committee member, Dr. Samantha Robinson, to calculate results upon performing statistical analysis and algorithms. I was able to take individualized education plans (IEPS) and teacher-child rating scale results from a TCRS 2.1 screener that was given to second-grade teachers from one school and completed on all children in the second-grade at the beginning of the year over two years. Data was merged for the two cohorts.
Using this screening and the Individualized Education plans I was able to use descriptive statistics to determine if students who were eligible for speech-language therapy services were also eligible for counseling services. A comprehensive qualitative analysis of the TCRS 2.1 subtest items was conducted to determine themes in the data. For statistical analysis, the Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique (SMOT) was then used due to the imbalance in the number of students qualifying for SLP services. Then, a random forest-based algorithm was used to analyze the data.
The results concluded that of the 93 students who were given the TCRS 2.1 screener, 66% qualified for CCPT services. Of the nine students who had an active IEP. meaning they were in speech-language therapy, eight IEP students also qualified for play therapy services.
A Pearson’s correlation was used from the oversampled data calculated from the SMOT algorithm and from the TCRS 2.1 scores of the second-grade students. A significant correlation was found within the data between the group and peer social skills. Students who qualified for counseling services and were eligible for speech-language services had significantly lower peer social skills compared to students who were not eligible for speech-language services.
These results were what we hoped to find and are important because they emphasizes the need for interprofessional collaboration between registered play therapists and speech-langauge pathologists. The data analyzed proves that many of the same clientele are being seen by both professionals. Yet, these professions do not collaborate on goals or have knowledge in one another’s expertise. This study highlights a possible indicator, being poor peer social skills, for children qualifying for both services. If registered play therapists and speech-language pathologists would collaborate knowing this is a common characteristic found in their shared clients, goals could be made to accelerate a child’s time in services. From other studies conducted, we know that interprofessional collaboration benefits the whole child, therefore registered play therapists and speech langauge pathologists should work together for the success of individuals they are working with.
Challenges that arose with this study were first and for most a pandemic. Due to the pandemic I was unable to meet with my committee in person this past semester. This forced us to be flexible in our study and change formats when needed. Second, the time constraint given was a challenge. This, being my undergraduate research study, had to be completed within a time frame. With more time more could have possibly been done. Lastly, little to no research has been conducted on this subject before so It was challenge to create a study with very little to compare to. Despite these challenges I was able to complete this research project and end on something I am proud to share. I recently presented at the Honors Symposium and won first place for my achievements and poster presentation. I also successfully orally defended my research to my committee.
What’s next? I plan to graduate from the University of Arkansas this coming May with a Bachelors’s in Communication Sciences and Disorders. I plan to attend Baylor University this coming fall to obtain my master’s in speech-language pathology. I have applied and would like to present my work at the American Speech and Hearing Association conference in November if accepted. I hope to continue to do research and work on what I have accomplished despite my funding term ending here. I’m thankful for the honors program and all I have been able to learn and accomplish through it. This has been an experience I will forever take with me.