| Phonetic transcription, a popular method for analyzing speech, is not reliable for examining vocalizations of young infants. This study is to determine what age phonetic transcription reliability is achieved. Results were combined with a prior phonetic transcription reliability study involving seven children, with each child’s vocalizations recorded from 7 to 18 months of age. For this present study, vocalization samples were obtained from 12 children, two at each month of age between 19 and 24 months, then 20 utterances from each child were transcribed by two researchers and compared using a weighted approach to measure inter-transcriber reliability. The result of this study is phonetic transcription reliability increases and reaches a reliability value of 0.8 or greater by the time children are 21 months old. Conclusions from this study will facilitate speech-language pathologists selecting the most appropriate method for documenting speech sounds at various ages in clinical practice or research.
Keywords: phonetic transcription reliability, infant vocal development, speech language pathology |