Gender and geographic differences in the prevalence of reportable childhood speech and language disability in Taiwan.
Taiwan’s national list shows childhood speech-language disability climbing fastest among boys and rural kids.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team pulled every registered case of childhood speech-language disability in Taiwan from 2004 to 2010.
They counted how many kids were listed each year and split the counts by sex and by city versus countryside.
What they found
The total number of cases crept upward every year.
Boys and rural children kept making up a bigger slice of the pie.
How this fits with other research
Lai et al. (2012) saw the same male and rural gap in intellectual disability from the same registry. The pattern looks like a twin, just swapping the label from ID to SLD.
Lin (2009) spotted the male excess earlier, so the new data extend that trend into speech-language problems.
Lin et al. (2011) warn that caregivers miss language issues more than motor ones. Rising registry numbers may reflect better detection, not just more kids.
Why it matters
If you serve Taiwanese kids, expect more referrals from rural areas and more boys. Use the same sex and rural lens when you plan staffing and travel. Probe language skills in every boy who lands on your caseload for other delays; the registry says the odds are high.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Speech and language disability (SLD) is not uncommon in children. However, data at the national level are limited, and geographic differences are seldom evaluated. Starting from 1980, the local governments in Taiwan has begun to certify disabled residents for providing various services and report cases to the central government according to the law, and the central government maintains a registry of reported cases, which provides a unique opportunity for studying SLD at the national level. Using the registry data from 2004 to 2010, we calculated the prevalence of SLD by age, gender, and geographic area and assessed the changes over time. Because the government discourages the certification under 3 years of age, we excluded cases under 3 years old from the analyses. We found that from 2004 to 2010 the registered cases between 3 and 17 years old increased from 1418 to 1637 per year, and the prevalence generally increased every year in all age groups except in 12-14 years of age. In each year there were more boy cases than girl cases, and the prevalence rate ratio increased from 1.50 to 1.83 (p < 0.05 in all years), with an increasing trend over time (p < 0.01). A higher prevalence was observed in the rural areas over the years, and the prevalence rate ratio increased from 1.35 to 1.71 (p < 0.05 in all years), with an increasing trend over time (p < 0.01). Further studies identifying the risk factors contributed to the increases might help the prevention of SLD in the future.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2015 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2015.01.009