resulted from both impairment and barriers and argued that restrictions to activities and participation stemmed from impairment effects, ‘barriers to doing’ and ‘barriers to being’. Indeed, Anastasiou and Kauffman (2013, p. 454) argue “what is needed is a unified and multidimensional understanding of disabilities, clarifying the relationship among the biological and cultural, individual and social, psychological and behavioural, intrinsic and external factors affecting the lives of people without eliminating one of these levels of analysis.” This view is supported by emerging evidence that children with speech and language disorders attributed some restrictions in activities and participation to themselves and other restrictions to societal barriers (Connors & Stalker, 2007; McCormack, McLeod, McAllister, & Harrison, 2010; Merrick & Roulstone, 2011). Therefore within a social model of disability framework, risks to the well-being of children with speech and language disorders may arise from a range of factors such as potential negative feelings associated with having a communication disability and difficulties related to social inclusion. In terms of social inclusion, evidence is mixed regarding children with speech and language disorders. For example, it is not clear whether or not these children are more at risk in relation to bullying. Sweeting and West (2001) found that 14% of 11 year old children, in a sample of 2,237, reported that they were bullied or teased on a regular basis as compared with 39% of children with speech problems. Redmond (2011) cautions that the term ‘speech difficulties’ may have been used as an umbrella term for a range of communication difficulties. Some researchers found that children with specific language impairment (SLI) were at increased risk of bullying (Conti-Ramsden & Botting, 2004; Knox & Conti-Ramsden, 2003, 2007;
child. Data saturation can be difficult to achieve in narrative inquiry because there is always potential for new stories to emerge. We aimed to generate sufficient data to answer the research questions and were mindful of not placing too many demands on the children’s time. Procedure The children selected their own pseudonyms. The first author, an experienced pathologist and researcher who did not know any of the participants, conducted interviews with the participants that typically lasted between 45 minutes and 1 hour. Parents and children were offered choices about where the interviews would be held, with the majority selecting their homes (n = 7). A flexible topic guide was generated following a pilot study with three children with speech and language disorders (see Supplemental Table 1). The topic guide included open-ended questions about events, happenings, and relationships in different contexts such as home, school, and leisure contexts. The flexibility of this topic guide provided scope for the participants’ ideas to come to the surface (Greig, Taylor, & MacKay, 2007). The topic of ‘talking’ was introduced by the researcher in the second or third interview in order to give the children an opportunity to discuss this topic spontaneously. A range of techniques were used to generate narratives and to probe for further information when the responses were short or vague. For example, one of the techniques used was a funnelling technique (Plummer, 2001). Using this approach, the researcher introduced a topic by asking broad grand tour questions (e.g., “can you tell me about your favourite sports?”) which were followed up with more specific and focused mini-tour questions (e.g., “can you tell me about a game that you played in?”). The goal was to generate data about actions rather than attributes because actions are considered a core element of narratives (Wetherell et al., 2007). The researcher used active listening techniques such as restating and summarising what the child had
frustrated in the interview context when the researcher did not understand her. For example, when the researcher returned with a summary of Sara’s stories to check the researcher’s understandings of them, Sara was frustrated when referents had been misunderstood or misinterpreted. For example, in the following extract she attributed communication breakdown to both the researcher and herself (e.g., “how could we get confused actually?”) and to the researcher (e.g., “why do you get confused?”). Sara, Interview 3 [The researcher was clarifying information about friendships from a transcript of a previous interview] P: Why do you get confused? I: I know. See I’m reading it upside down. So it’s Susan. Well that could be actually here because you said your parents doesn’t know her parents. So your parents maybe don’t know her parents. Is that what you meant? P: I don’t know what I was saying. Just that maybe (inaudible) and let’s say Jane is the new best friend of Susan… How could we get so confused actually? In summary, children conceptualised communication impairment and disability in different ways with some talking about their own intrinsic difficulties and others talking about contexts where others could not understand them. Difficulties with relationships. Eight participants evaluated narratives about relationships with others in negative ways e.g., narratives about conflict with parents, siblings, and teachers as well as difficulties with peer relationships. Conflict with parents and teachers was often about restrictions in autonomy such as