The prevalence of stuttering in the hearing-impaired school age population

The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of stuttering in the current hearing-impaired school age population. Backus (1938) and Harms and Malone (1939) found a low incidence of stuttering in the hearing-impaired population in surveys conducted almost 50 years ago. Those surveys asked for information only on speech disfluency and did not collect information on disfluency in manual communication. The present survey was sent to 150 regional, private, and state schools for the hearing impaired. Seventy-seven schools responded, representing a total of 9,930 students enrolled. Twelve hearing-impaired students were reported who stutter: 3 were reported to stutter in the oral mode only, 6 in manual communication only, and 3 in both modes. The results indicate that the prevalence of stuttering in the hearing-impaired population is 0.12% and that perceived manual disfluency is more prevalent than oral disfluency.