A Rapid Review to Reconsider the Concept of Accuracy in Speech Sound Production

Our definitions of accuracy influence how we view children's skills, identify therapeutic needs, compare results, and apply findings to clinical practice. As such, it is critical that we are transparent about describing our methods. Thus, we implemented a rapid review to explore how accuracy was defined. We screened, identified, and reviewed 44 research papers that met our inclusion criteria. The rapid review focused on studies of speech production among children aged 2–6 years in three key tasks: single-word production, spontaneous speech, and speech production within a speech treatment context. Our analysis revealed that definitions of accuracy are limited or absent across studies with few studies clearly specifying how the sample was elicited, analyzed, or transcribed. In addition, descriptions of key participant characteristics that may influence accuracy were inconsistent. Our conclusions suggest that additional methodological details to define accuracy should be reported in future studies to better support the clinical application of study results and replication. We offer suggestions for reporting details that may support more transparent definitions of accuracy and consistency in description of methods.