Date of Conferral

2017

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Psychology

Advisor

Ricardo Thomas

Abstract

I explored how stuttering affects adult women in aspects of their life in 4 domains: social, occupational, academic, and financial. The literature contains few studies on adult women who stutter, and this research addressed these women regarding the kinds of problems they have encountered in their lives. The results of this phenomenological study identified the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings of adult women who stutter regarding how their speech disorder affected them in the 4 domains. The theoretical orientation used for this study was positive psychology. Positive psychology reflects how women who stutter used positive coping strategies to move forward, despite being confronted by harsh conditions in 4 life domains. I explored the positive coping strategies these adult women used in each of these areas of their lives. The participants ranged in age from 26 to 66. The recruitment for the participants took place through the Stuttering Foundation website. The interviews were conducted via Skype and focused on lived experiences of women who stutter in 4 life domains and what positive coping strategies they use. I audio recorded interviews for 10 participants. I transcribed the interviews, and identified, and analyzed the meaning units. I assigned the meaning units ideographic themes. I renamed reoccurring idiographic themes to nomothetic themes. The key findings indicated that stuttering consistently interfered with women in 4 life domains: social, financial, academic, and occupational. This phenomenological study might lead to positive social change through education about stuttering that comes from a personal level of lived experiences. This work contributes to

the advancement of science for future studies to research other aspects of stuttering.

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