Prevalence of Speech Sound Disorders in 6-Year-Old Children in Korea

The prevalence of a public health problem is a key statistic in the allocation of funds for research and public services. This study investigated 6-year-old Korean children' speech production skills and the prevalence of speech sound disorders (SSD) in relation to demographic factors (gender, birth order, mother's education background, and residence area size) that are known to influence speech sound development. Methods: Data from 1,503 children was collected for the Korean Child Panel Study conducted by the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education. The participants' average age was 6.3 years (51.2% boys and 48.8% girls). To assess their articulation, the '3 Sentence-Screening-Test' was administered to each of the children. Results: The primary findings are as follows. In relation to gender, the prevalence of SSD was significantly higher in boys than girls with 2.8% (at-risk 7.9%) in boys and 1.7% (at-risk 4.6%) in girls. As for the occurrence of speech sound errors in relation to birth order, significantly increased errors and prevalence were found in later births. The prevalence of SSD in relation to mothers' educational backgrounds tends to decrease with higher academic ability but did not show a statistically significant difference. In relation to residence size, the prevalence of SSD was more frequent in children residing in rural area than children residing in urban area, but the difference was not statistically significant.