Index
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Clinicians
Needed! |
Hardware
Requirements Inventory Design User Satisfaction Clinician Participation |
Clinician Participation
Collaborating clinicians will need to become familiar with the
ModelTalker and InvTool software so they can answer basic client
questions. The software can be downloaded here. The download includes an
instructive tutorial and our staff will be available by phone and by
email to answer any questions that may arise regarding the software or
any other aspect of the study.
Clinicians will identify clients as good candidates for recording
personalized synthetic voices. For the evaluation study, we are
specifically looking for:
We will depend upon collaborating clinicians to see that clients who
wish to participate in the study and their associates read,
understand, and sign a human subjects consent form. Consent forms that
have been approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the
A.I. duPont Hospital for Children will be provided to
clinicians. These must be signed by all subjects and returned to our
laboratory.
In order to collaborate in the study, clinicians may first have to
obtain Human Subjects approval at their own institution. A packet of
information is available to facilitate the IRB approval process (see
below). The packet includes an introductory letter to clinicians, a
copy of the research protocol, subject registration forms, surveys and
evaluation forms used in the experiment, and copies of the human
subjects consent forms for clients and associates that have already
been approved by the IRB at the A.I. duPont Hospital for
Children. There is also a checklist for clinical collaborators
outlining each step in the protocol that clinicians should follow.
Complete Experimental Instructions, including IRB Packet, in PDF format
Once clients and their designated associates have agreed to
participate in the study and have filled out all the necessary
paperwork, the clinician will assist the client with accessing the
hardware and software they will need to create a synthesized voice and
instruct them on how to use the software to record their voice. When
the client has finished recording his or her voice, the clinician will
help them to upload the completed voice to our lab.
On the day that the client's voice is complete, they will be given a
standard passage to synthesize and also spend some time using it to
speak whatever they wish. Then they will fill out a web-based survey
prompting them for their opinions about several different aspects of
the synthesizer and the recording process. They will then be
encouraged to use the synthesizer as part of their daily
activities. The client's associate will also listen to the voice and
fill out a survey.
Once each week for the next eight weeks, both the client and their
associate will independently access a series of test sentences
synthesized from the client's voice. The test sentences will be made
available on a secure page of our web site and will not be accessible
to anyone except the intended client and associate. The client (and,
separately, their associate) will listen to each sentence by clicking
a button on the web page and then answer some questions regarding the
characteristics of the speech that they hear. At the end of the
eight-week experiment, the client and their associate will each fill
out a final survey over the web.
In addition to assisting in subject recruitment and providing
assistance to and monitoring subjects during the experiment,
collaborating clinicians will help us by providing feedback on the
process and the resulting synthetic voice.
Clients who wish to participate in the study will be required to
appoint an associate (a family member, friend, or caregiver) to
participate with them. The client will communicate with their
associate using their synthesized voice and both the client and their
associate will complete assessment surveys.
Even if you will not need Human Subjects approval from your institution,
you should download this packet, as it contains complete instructions
for the experiment.