The Construction and Development of the Thai Simplified Nasometric Assessment Procedures (Thai SNAP Test) for Children Aged 4 to 6 Years

Objective: To construct and develop the Thai Simplified Nasometric Assessment Procedures [Thai SNAP Test] for children aged 4 to 6 years and assess the validity and reliability of the test. Materials and Methods: After the Thai SNAP Test was constructed, the test content validity was assessed by three professional speech and language pathologists and the reliability was determined using the test-retest reliability method. Fifty-one normal Thai children aged 4 to 6 years were asked to produce 25 speech stimuli. The first and second nasalance scores of each speech stimulus were obtained using a Nasometer II Model 6450. Results: The Thai SNAP Test is composed of two subtests: 20 items in Syllable Repetition/Prolonged Sound Subtest I, and 5 items in Picture-Cued Subtest II. All items showed an excellent level of expert agreement (I-CVI = 1.00). Correlation coefficients for the test-retest nasalance scores showed moderate to very strong positive linear relationships ranging from 0.63 to 1.00 (p<0.05). Conclusion: The Thai SNAP Test could potentially be used as a part of a clinical nasalance assessment process for children aged 4 to 6 years, including children with illiteracy, limited attention span, lack of cooperation, or limited phonological competence. The examiner can select the most appropriate items needed to measure the nasalance scores depending on the phonological competence of the subject. Keywords: Thai SNAP Test, Nasalance score, Nasometer, Thai children