Wellbeing among children with and without stuttering: A comparative study

Stuttering is a speech disorder that results in the disruption of speech with pauses, repetitions, and other speech hesitancies. The onset of stuttering is often during the development of a child’s communication skills. The present study aims to compare the extent of wellbeing among stuttering and non-stuttering children. A total of 160 subjects (80 stuttering and 80 nonstuttering) children were randomly selected from few schools and institutes of Karnataka state. Wellbeing of the subjects was assessed through Sterling Children’s Wellbeing Scale developed by Liddle and Carter (2015). Wellbeing of the subjects was measured in 2 subcomponents-Positive emotional and state and positive outlook along with a social desirability subscale. Two-way ANOVA was employed to find out the difference between stuttering and non-stuttering children in their wellbeing scores, along with gender effects. Results revealed that in all the subcomponents components and total wellbeing scores non-stutterers had higher wellbeing than stutterers. Male and female subjects had similar wellbeing scores in positive emotions, positive outlook, social desirability and total wellbeing scores. There were no significant interaction effects between groups and gender for individual components and total wellbeing scores.