Assessment protocols in studying children’s speech acquisition

Abstract

Acquisition of children’s speech has been conducted for a long time, across languages, and by different research designs and measurement protocols. Cross-sectional is one of the most popular research designs in studying children’s speech acquisition. This paper reviews 33 studies including 29 international and four Vietnamese studies of children’s speech acquisition to describe similarities as well as differences and limitations of measurement protocols used in the studies. Children’s speech acquisition measurement protocol comprised different components including participant recruitment, instruments, procedure, examiners, recording, reliability, analysis, and reporting. These components need to be critically considered when studying children’s speech acquisition.