An International Database of Public Attitudes Toward Stuttering

The Public Opinion Survey of Human Attributes–Stuttering (POSHA–S) Database, intermittently updated, at the time of this report, contains 25,739 respondents from 45 countries with responses in 28 languages, representing 11 world regions. Among public and selected population samples, more than 600 self-identified stutterers are included. The Microsoft Excel database file features more than 150 columns of POSHA–S results. Some data, such as state/province and country of respondents, primary job or occupation, languages known, race, and religion, are included as text. Other demographic items and all attitude items are numerical data. The POSHA–S has check boxes or scales of 1–5 for other demographic variables and general ratings that compare stuttering to four other “anchor” attributes (intelligence, left-handedness, obesity, and mental illness). All subsequent stuttering attitude items are scored on a scale of 1–3, reflecting “no”, “not sure”, and “yes”, respectively. All scaled ratings are converted to a uniform −100 to +100 scale, with some item ratings inverted so that, uniformly, higher ratings reflect more positive attitudes and lower ratings reflect more negative attitudes. All respondents are classified according to population, a category within population, region or continent, country, language, and other distinctive features.