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Table 1. Localities of service provision for Australian SLPs

Locations

Current research

Rose et al. (2013)

Speech Pathology Association of Australia (2003)

Capital cities/ metropolitan area

78.1%

58.5%

84%

Regional cities

16.4 %

41.5% (combined regional and rural locations)

10.7%

Regional towns

6.8%

3.1%

Remote area

1.4%

0.8%

Very remote area

0

0

May 2013). This indicates that approximately 10% of the potential target population was recruited for this study. The average number of years spent working as a SLP was 6.70 ( SD = 4.8) with 16.4% respondents indicating they have worked for more than 15 years. Table 1 details the regions in which the respondents provided services and how this compares to the general Australian SLP population and to the results from a recent survey into general aphasia rehabilitation practices by Rose et al. (2014). Respondents were sourced from mailing lists of the Centre for Clinical Research Excellence in Aphasia Rehabilitation and the Speech Pathology Australia Email Google Chat Group. Recruitment advertisements were also placed in the Speech Pathology Australia national and state branch e-newsletters. Ethics approval for this study was granted by the La Trobe University Faculty of Health Sciences Human Ethics Committee (FHEC 12/193). Questionnaire A 30-item internet survey was piloted on a group of six volunteer SLPs experienced in aphasia rehabilitation. The final survey consisted of 31 items and was expected to take 30 minutes to complete. The survey was available to respondents during March and April 2013. Results from one section of the survey dedicated to interpreting services will be reported in a future publication. The questionnaire is provided in the Appendix. Analysis A content analysis was conducted on text responses to open questions (Berg, 1998). Responses for each question were given a thematic code by the first author. Similar codes were grouped together to generate a “theme”. All themes that were generated were then analysed to determine if macro-level themes which encompassed themes with related content were present. Using the themes that were generated, the second author re-coded 10% of all the responses. Point-to-point inter-rater agreement was achieved at 91.4%. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse responses to closed questions. Descriptive analyses are used to describe different characteristics of a population, and commonly used in survey research (Portney & Watkins, 2009). Frequency counts of nominal and ordinal data were conducted and expressed as numerical figures and percentages. Measures of central tendency (mean) and dispersion (range and standard deviation) were calculated for ratio data. Results This paper reports the survey findings with regards to the knowledge, skills, and education of our profession, and areas of clinical practice relevant to these topics. While the

However, a similar investigation of specific knowledge and skill gaps in Australia has yet to be made. The current body of research raises concerns about the state of the knowledge, skills, and, consequently, the quality of the services of SLPs working in aphasia management with CALD communities in Australia. Yet, little is known about what specific knowledge and skills gaps need to be addressed. Importantly, there is also little information regarding aphasia intervention practices. Large-scale investigation into SLPs’ satisfaction and confidence levels regarding the overall range of services provided to CALD clients is absent. Such information along with the perceived knowledge and skill needs of clinicians can inform professional development (PD) and university programs of potential improvements and move us closer to providing quality culturally competent aphasia management services. Aims This research aimed to investigate current demographic characteristics, perceived levels of knowledge, skills and education, aphasia rehabilitation practices, and perceived levels of confidence and satisfaction of SLPs working in aphasia rehabilitation in Australia with CALD clients. For the purpose of this paper, we use the term CALD as a broad descriptor to refer to individuals other than the English- speaking Anglo-Saxon majority. We acknowledge that in common use the term CALD is often used to refer to individuals born overseas (Sawrikar & Katz, 2009); however, we chose not to focus on migrant status as a defining feature of the term in our survey. We also note that the term CALD does not generally include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and we have not focused on the issues specific to these people; however, we have included occasional mention of these communities in our paper where our participants have raised relevant issues. We also investigated the challenges faced, and changes required, as reported by SLPs when working with CALD populations. Method Participants Members of the target population were SLPs with a caseload including patients with aphasia (PWA) in Australia at the time of the survey. The survey link was accessed 88 times; however, only 73 surveys were completed and analysed. Fifteen incomplete surveys were excluded because the respondents completed less than 40% of the questions. At the time of data collection, there were approximately 720 SLPs on a national database held by the Speech Pathology Association of Australia who self-listed adult language disorders (including aphasia) as a specialty area in their profiles (M. Bradley, personal communication, 7

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JCPSLP Volume 17, Number 1 2015

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