This study compared speech disfluency rates within five subdisciplines of pharmacy to estimate their paradigm development, and identified alternative factors associated with differing rates. Rates were observed in randomly selected courses. Interviews were conducted to control for subjects' inherent disfluency rates. Lecturers completed a modified version of the Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation survey and a self-rated anxiety measure. Ten percent of recordings were randomly selected for analysis by two judges to determine inter-rater reliability. An ANCOVA was conducted on the frequency of lecture disfluencies, with the frequency of interview disfluencies serving as the covariate. The overall mean disfluency rate in lectures was 2.11 disfluencies/minute. Average disfluency rates among the five subdisciplines ranged from 1.28 to 2.74. It does not appear that type of discipline (even after controlling for subjects' natural disfluency rates), self-rated anxiety, fear of negative evaluation or other alternative factors affect disfluency rates in the classroom.
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