Measuring social communication in the community: Novel tools for advancing family participation

Natural contexts and family involvement are key features of effective intervention approaches. However, the measurement of community participation and parent engagement with children remains complex. Therefore, we examined the feasibility of combining use of the Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA®) system and a global positioning system (GPS; i.e., Qstarz® BT-Q1000XT). The LENA is a small speech recognition device that captures and quantifies full-day recordings of the natural language environment. The Qstarz BT-Q1000XT is a wearable GPS data logger that allows identification of the locations a person visits. The marrying of these measures allows for an accurate representation of community settings that afford children greater social communication opportunities. Our results show that the combination of measures provides meaningful social communication location data. Also, the participating caregiver reported that the collection of measures was feasible across community settings.