Examining the relationship between speech intensity and self-rated communicative effectiveness in individuals with Parkinson's disease and hypophonia

• Individuals with PD can experience reduced communicative effectiveness in a variety of social situations.
• The assessment of communicative effectiveness can broaden the scope of outcome measurement.
• The assessment of communicative effectiveness may aid the clinician in providing appropriate educational strategies to manage communication breakdown in individuals with Parkinson's disease and hypophonia.

PurposeTo examine the relationship between speech intensity and self-ratings of communicative effectiveness in speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD) and hypophonia. An additional purpose was to evaluate if self-ratings of communicative effectiveness made by participants with PD differed from ratings made by primary communication partners.MethodsThirty participants with PD and 15 healthy older adults completed the Communication Effectiveness Survey. Thirty primary communication partners rated the communicative effectiveness of his/her partner with PD. Speech intensity was calculated for participants with PD and control participants based on conversational utterances.ResultsResults revealed significant differences between groups in conversational speech intensity (p = .001). Participants with PD self-rated communicative effectiveness significantly lower than control participants (p = .000). Correlational analyses revealed a small but non-significant relationship between speech intensity and communicative effectiveness for participants with PD (r = 0.298, p = .110) and control participants (r = 0.327, p = .234). Self-ratings of communicative effectiveness made participants with PD was not significantly different than ratings made by primary communication partners (p = .20).ConclusionsObtaining information on communicative effectiveness may help to broaden outcome measurement and may aid in the provision of educational strategies. Findings also suggest that communicative effectiveness may be a separate and a distinct construct that cannot necessarily be predicted from the severity of hypophonia.