Caregiver and Clinician Priorities for User-Centered Metaverse-Based Speech-Language Therapy: An Analytic Hierarchy Process Study

Background/Objectives: Metaverse technologies are increasingly considered for pediatric speech-language therapy, yet adoption has outpaced evidence on what caregivers and speech-language pathologists (SLPs)-the groups whose decisions drive uptake-consider important. This study identified and compared the priorities caregivers and SLPs assign to factors relevant to metaverse-based speech-language therapy for children, and examined whether caregiver priorities differ by developmental stage.

Methods

In this cross-sectional formative needs assessment, a three-stage instrument-development sequence using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) produced a hierarchy of 3 high-level categories (Subject, System, Content), 8 medium-level categories, and 24 sub-factors. Caregivers of children aged 0-12 years with language development deficits, all receiving therapy (48.8% without a formal disability diagnosis, 43.2% with developmental language disorder), and practicing SLPs in Korea were recruited by convenience sampling. After data cleaning, 250 caregivers and 67 SLPs were analyzed, with caregiver data stratified into early-childhood, pre-school, and school-age groups.