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. 2022 Nov;44(1):3-13.
doi: 10.1177/15257401211068126. Epub 2021 Dec 31.

Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six: Validation of Language Skills in the Jamaican Context

Leslie E Kokotek  1 , Karla N Washington  1   2 , Barbara Jane Cunningham  3 , Rachel Wright Karem  1   4 , Brittany Fletcher  1
Affiliations

Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six: Validation of Language Skills in the Jamaican Context

Leslie E Kokotek et al. Commun Disord Q. 2022 Nov.

Abstract

The Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six (FOCUS) is one of a few validated outcome measures related to children's communicative participation. Additional validation of the FOCUS measure could address the paucity of validated outcomes-based measures available for assessing preschool-age children, particularly for those who are multilingual. The data collected for this study, with a representative sample of Jamaican Creole-English speaking children, extend the applicability of the FOCUS to a broader range of preschoolers and expand psychometric evidence for the FOCUS to a multilingual and understudied context.

Keywords: English/languages; Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs); bilingualism/dialects; evidence-based practice; functional communication cultural/linguistic diversity.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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