Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Covert working

Sorry, I have not been posting a lot over the last weeks. But, strangely enough my visitor numbers kept high. I have been busy working on my flat that I bought in Luxembourg-City. If you ever are close to Luxembourg, let me know and you are invited to stay at my place, but only if you are a stutterer, researcher, or (female) therapist! :-)

But I have also been busy working secretly in the background on stuttering research.

First, I am organsing a research plenary with talks and discussion forum at this year's British Stammering Association (BSA) conference in Telford. I was able to get leading researchers of different areas coming to Telford. I'll tell you more about this exciting event once the details are sorted out.

Second, I have been editing the debate between Scott Yaruss and Mark Onslow on therapy approaches to childhood stuttering. The debate will appear in Speaking Out, the BSA magazine. The editing took hours, but now I understand the arguments put forward much better! I'll probably post the debate on my blog piece-wise if the BSA editor gives his OK.

And finally, I am working on my presentation and proceeding contribution for IFA 2006 in Dublin. Here is the abstract I sent in

ABSTRACT:

I discuss how best to do the statistical analysis of the outcome data of early childhood intervention. The natural recovery rate of dysfluent children significantly complicates the statistical study of the outcome data. I argue that the standard random control trial setup needs to be modified, because children are randomly assigned to the treatment or control group and by chance one group will have a higher natural recovery rate. I also point out other conceptual difficulties when using a randomized control trial setup. Finally, I suggest that there is no need for a control group, also because other studies have already determined the natural recovery rate.


But really it's a bit of nonsense to ask for an abstract months before the conference. I will only loosely stick to the abstract. Most researchers are writing the abstract before they write the presentation and paper!

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