Cultural influences on attitudes toward speech disorders: aos, dysarthria, and stuttering

• Main Author: Kumar, Hannah
• Format: Final Year Project Report
• Language: English; English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, (UNIMAS) 2015
• Subjects: H Social Sciences (General)
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/12146/1/Hannah.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/12146/4/Hannah%20full.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/12146/
• Institution: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak

In a multicultural country like Malaysia, culture is an important element that has great influences on the people's attitudes and behavior significantly. Therefore, a multicultural population in which the prevalence of speech disorders is on the rise may have various attitudes toward these disorders and the individuals with these disorders. Consequently, this study was conducted among UNIMAS students with Malaysian citizenship to see if there were any differences in attitudes toward three speech disorders, namely AOS, dysarthria, and stuttering, based on their various cultural groups. Data was collected via questionnaires that measured the attitudes of respondents based on a 5 point Likert scale. One-Way Analysis of . Variance (ANOVA) in SPSS was used to analyze the data in order to determine if differences did exist. Findings showed that attitudes toward speech disorders did not vary according to culture in this subpopulation. In addition, data analysis indicated that respondents generally have positive attitudes toward speech disorders. Improvements like expanding the population under study and using qualitative measures to measure attitudes should be employed in future research to obtain more accurate and representative findings. To conclude, different cultures do not affect Malaysian university students' attitudes toward speech disorders.