Mabel Rice (KS IDDRC) Sets Standards for Speech and Hearing Phenotypes for Public Health Studies

May 12, 2011

University of Kansas Center for Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities investigator Mabel Rice, Fred and Virginia Merrill Distinguished Professor of Advanced Studies, contributed to establishing standards for speech and hearing phenotypes for epidemiological studies. She co-chaired the Speech and Hearing Working Group for PhenX, a three-year project funded by the National Human Genome Research begun in 2008.

The Speech and Hearing measures are posted on the PhenX site<https://www.phenx.org/Default.aspx?tabid=659>.

The PhenX Toolkit <https://www.phenxtoolkit.org/> allows researchers to search and select measures for use in large-scale studies. For each measure, the Toolkit provides protocols, references and links to resources. The Toolkit generates a report that directs researchers how to incorporate the measures into their studies. The use of PhenX measures makes studies compatible with other studies using PhenX measures.

Working Groups of six to eight scientists standardized up to 15 measures for each of 21 research "domains" that include diseases and conditions; lifestyle factors and anthropometrics and environmental exposures.