Community awareness of speech pathology: A regional perspective

Objective: Speech pathology has a history of low public awareness and in the absence of current research it is unclear if community awareness has changed in recent years. This study sought to explore a regional community’s awareness of speech pathology as the impetus for considering future directions pertaining to awareness and understanding of the scope of practice of this profession. Design: An anonymous online survey was created using questions from previously validated surveys on this topic, and then distributed via snowball sampling using social media. Setting: Data are from residents of the Central Queensland community in Australia. Participants: Two hundred and seven adults who live in Central Queensland completed the survey. Main outcome measures: Comparisons were drawn between the responses from this survey to those from earlier studies. Results: The majority of respondents had heard of speech pathology mostly due to personal contact, but they indicated that they did not know ‘a lot’ about speech pathology. Knowledgeable individuals had higher levels of education and were better able to identify speech pathologists’ scope of practice. Personal contact with a speech pathologist also significantly contributed to self-rated knowledge and accurate identification of scope of practice of speech pathologists. Conclusion: While regional Central Queensland community members have heard of speech pathology, their self-reported knowledge of the profession continues to be low. In order to optimise service access and consumer outcomes it is recommended that the profession aims to improve community awareness of speech pathology. © 2020 National Rural Health Alliance Ltd.