Effect of Age and Gender on Stuttering in the Students of Babol (Iran) in Educational Year 2010-2011

One of human needs in life is communication and speech is the easiest way to communicate. Any disorder in fluency or stuttering can create difficulties in communication. Based on the reports, the prevalence of stuttering is related to English speakers and little researches have been done in this field in Iran. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of age and gender on stuttering in different ages of students of Babol.

This cross sectional study was performed in the educational year 2010-2011 on 33331 students from 139 elementary, middle and high schools of Babol. Samples were introduced by teachers, consultants and speech therapists (during a short conversation with the students). Then their speaking samples of general and descriptive speech and text reading were recorded by a MP4. Frequency of their stuttering was calculated by the formula "[(pw + ss). Ru] + (2 dp)]". The students were considered as stuttering persons who scored over 4.

Among all students of Babol city, 381 (1.1%) were stutterer. Prevalence of stuttering at the elementary school level was 1.5% (221of 14542), at the middle school level was 0.9% (116 of 12245) and at the high school level was 0.7% (44 of 6544) that showed a significant difference in different levels (p?0.001). According to gender differences, the percent of stuttering in boys was 1.4% (about 204 students of 14369) and in girls was 0.9% (177 students of 18962) (p? 0.001).

Results of this study showed that the prevalence of stuttering in boys was higher than girls that it decreases with increasing age.