Knowing whether you’re measuring leading indicators, which predict future outcomes, or lagging indicators, which measure past success, is key to understanding what your data tells you. But it’s not so easy to tell the difference between the two, and that’s the reason for this podcast. It’s the first of a two part series because there is lot to digest around leading and lagging indicators.
Check out my free resource library and my store for some fantastic leading and lagging indicator tools!
— Useful Links —
Institute For Evidence Based Change
Phonological Awareness Tracking Tool
Music: Simple Gifts performed by Ted Yoder, used with permission
Welcome to the Speech Umbrella podcast. I love Fall, I love pumpkins, and colorful leaves, and cool crisp mornings. But one thing I haven’t loved is taking and analyzing data. Part of my past frustration with data was so often I felt it wasn’t a true reflection of what we did in therapy, nor did it drive change by showing me a direction to move towards. Since what gets measured changes and change is what we’re all about. It’s really important to find a way to make data work for us. You’ve probably already discovered that data can be powerful or meaningless. And if it’s meaningless, you’ve wasted valuable resources collecting it. One of the most valuable concepts I’ve learned regarding data is an understanding of leading and lagging indicators. understanding their differences and what those differences mean is an absolute game changer in speech therapy. I learned about leading and lagging indicators because my husband loves learning about business. He has whole bookshelves filled with books on business and listens to podcasts about business. So when he said I should listen to a podcast about leading and lagging indicators, I took him up on it. I started listening on a plane ride and while it was really valuable information, I have to admit, I fell asleep halfway through the podcast. Because their examples are all about business and they’re all business-related and my attention started to wander. But leading and lagging indicators apply to anything you measure. And I find education and learning examples much more interesting. So hopefully you’ll be able to stay awake for my podcast today. There’s so much information to absorb and the whole concept of leading and lagging indicators, I decided to make this a two episode podcast. Plus, I don’t want to put you to sleep.
Today, I’m doing a general overview of what leading and lagging indicators are and how they apply to our profession in a general sense. And the next podcast, I’ll cover specific ways to target leading and lagging indicators in therapy. When you can determine what your data is really telling you, you become a much more effective therapist and that’s the value in understanding leading and lagging indicators. So what are these indicators? A leading indicator looks forward at future outcomes and events. While a lagging indicator looks back at whether the intended result was achieved. And why is this important? Because the best way to manage performance is to merge the insights from backward looking indicators, that’s your lagging indicators, with more forward-looking insights and predictions, and those are your leading indicators. It’s like looking forward through the front window or backwards through the rear window, the way you’ve already traveled. Here’s some examples of leading and lagging indicators. In the business world, customer satisfaction is a leading indicator. While last year’s revenue is lagging. If you’re on a weight loss journey, what you eat and how you exercise are leading indicators, all the numbers on the scale are lagging indicators. Another way to think about leading and lagging indicators. Is a lagging indicator has already happened and you can’t change it. A leading indicator is something you can influence. You can control and change your customer service, and what you eat, and how you exercise. So, those are really important things to measure, to get where you want to go.
Speaking of what we can change and influence, a question often posed in the field of education is ‘why is it so hard to make a difference in outcomes?’ I’m quoting from the Institute for Evidence-Based Change here. “The problem could be the kind of indicator we are expected to use. Typically we use lagging indicators, lagging indicators are our big goals, the long-term impact we hope to achieve, graduation rates, persistence to degree. These are important, but it is difficult to affect these indicators directly in any meaningful way. What educators need are more leading indicators. Leading indicators are in our control and lead to our hope for success. Leading indicators are actionable for the target population we’re dealing with at the time. Leading indicators provide the right people with the right information at the right time.” Close quote.
So moving from the field of general education to speech and language pathology, let’s consider how leading and lagging indicators apply within our field. One of our clients truly master a skill such as using a speech sound in conversation or telling a complete narrative, they’re showing the ability to integrate multiple sub skills. Leading indicators are excellent for predicting integration. For example, someone who is using a target phoneme and conversation with peers is integrating motor skills, plus phonemic awareness skills, plus memory, plus attention to detail. So when I see a significant improvement in any of those areas: motor, phonemic awareness, memory or attention, I can predict a significant improvement in their generalization as a target phoneme. So notice, I didn’t say when a student is using said phoneme at 80% accuracy in a therapy room, in a describing task, which reads a lot, like some of our goals, that’s a lagging indicator. You’ve already measured how well they did at that describing task. That’s not to say that these goals are inappropriate, but they’re lagging goals. They don’t predict future success.
Here’s another example of a leading indicator. Students functioning as independent learners is a leading indicator. Here’s an example. Recently, I saw an example of independent learning in artic therapy with a client. He was having quite the struggle, getting his first precise and accurate R sound. But over a two week period, this happened. He described to me in his own words, how he moved his tongue when he managed to produce an R in a single word. He said his tongue moved up and back, but had less of a curl than he thought he needed. And I wrote that down verbatim. By the way, those are gold, when a client describes to exactly how they produced a phoneme, and when they say it accurately, write that down. Because those are their words, you can read them back to them and it will trigger in their mind what they did.
So the next week I read it back to him, his description, and he was able to say R again in that single word, and of his own volition. He said it several times, but thoughtfully and really paying attention to both his motor movements and the sound he produced. Although I was giving him feedback on when he was correct and incorrect, he really didn’t need it. He would shake his head when he heard himself miss the R and he got stronger and more confident when he said it correctly. He occasionally responded to my feedback about his accuracy with, yeah. I heard that. Voila, independent learning. If I had taken data on his correct versus his incorrect attempts. I didn’t, by the way. Now I will not have told anyone what was really happening. That data would have been a lagging indicator. So you see, someone who is hit and miss with R and not really paying attention could have ended up with the same percentage accuracy. But without being the independent learner.
Another example of a leading indicator is oral resting postures. A client who was able to demonstrate a correct oral resting posture. That is, their tongue is on their palate, their teeth and lips are gently closed and their lip and cheek muscles are in a neutral position. They’re in the optimal place to produce full names correctly. And an even stronger leading indicator, a future articulation success is when a client can maintain this oral resting posture while they are doing something else with their body.
Okay. Those are both articulation examples. So let’s look at some other areas.
When it comes to kids on the autism spectrum, being able to engage in casual conversation with their peers, I discovered a terrific leading indicator. It is their ability to recall events first in their own lives. And then in the lives of others. So after all, what did people converse about? What they did over the weekend, the movie they saw, where they went with their family and so forth. This is the stuff of casual conversation. And if it doesn’t come immediately to mind, you can’t even talk about what you did, let alone remember enough about what someone else did to ask them about their experiences. If this happens to you and you want to be socially engaged, and many children on the spectrum do want to be socially engaged, you may end up talking excessively about your special interests because you can’t pull anything else out of your memory. I have an entire podcast called The Conversation Game, that’s episode 50, describing how to build recall for individual and others experiences. It’s one of my all time favorite things I do with an autism group, because it works so well. The leading indicator for participation in casual conversation is built right into that technique. Their leading indicator is that they can bring to memory. the things that they have done recently and the things that they hear other people talking about.
How about a leading indicator for syntax? I’ve got two actually. For clients on the autism spectrum who are beginning to speak and beginning to combine words, take a look at the development of their stage one sentence types. Those are the earliest word combinations such as agent action, action locative, different types of negation and so forth. And if they have a solid representation of every stage one sentence type across their spontaneous language, that’s a great predictor for future language development without even bothering about MLU. I talk about stage one sentence types in detail in episode 26, so check it out. You can also get a PDF of all the stage one sentence types in my free resource library at thespeechumbrella.com slash free. I did mention that these are particular to clients who are on the autism spectrum, who are just beginning to combine words. And that’s just because I see this problem with clients on the autism spectrum, the most, I see them having the most difficulty with combining different kinds of sentence types, but this can also apply to children in the general population who are just beginning to speak.
Another fantastic leading indicator for syntax development was a totally accidental, but big, big discovery I came across a few years ago while working with clients who had significant disorders in both speech and language. I was working on phonological awareness with them and some very specific ways to help with speech. And I found that at certain key points in my phonological awareness intervention their syntax improved without my ever addressing it directly. And since then I’ve had it happen with enough clients that I now know improvement in phonological awareness is a leading indicator for syntax improvement. This has been such a help to me in therapy that I’m assembling all my phonological awareness materials into a single product which I’ll make available along with an online course on how to use it. I hope to have that ready by early 2024, so wish me luck. Let me tell you, phonological awareness is a huge leading indicator for a boatload of speech and language skills, but it’s often not taught in enough detail. If you’d like to start using some of my phonological awareness materials right now, take a look at the following things. I’ve got my Phonological Awareness Tracking Tool, Prime to Rhyme, the Nursery Rhyme Coloring Book, the Orange is a Carrot poem activity and Cue the Move, that’s a following directions activity, and these are all available at thespeechumbrella.com slash store and on TPT. The phonological awareness tracking tool describes when you would use each of these activities and gives you a really nice sequence of development. So you definitely want to take a look at that first for optimal results.
What do you think about leading and lagging indicators? Isn’t it a great tool for predicting success. It’s changed the way I write goals and collect data and how I structure therapy. Join me next time for a deep dive into specific activities and what they measure.
That wraps things up for today. If you want a transcript or the links for today’s and every other episode, you can find them at thespeechfrombella.com slash blog. Take a minute to browse around my store and sign up for the free resource library. I know you will find something that will help you with your kiddos. Tell your fellow therapist about the podcast, leave me a review and let’s connect on social media. I’m dstrattonslp on Instagram and the Speech Umbrella on Facebook. Check out my videos on YouTube too. There was a lot of great stuff under the speech umbrella.
I am a therapist and entrepreneur, clinic owner, published author, and creator of speech therapy materials.
The Speech Umbrella is run by Denise Stratton, Reach out with any questions.