Discourse analysis of aphasic speech has been around for many years, because it allows clinicians and researchers to achieve a measure that is reminiscent to everyday communication. Despite this high ecological validity, the field has numerous obstacles to overcome. In this symposium, we highlight work from members of the FOQUSAphasia (FOcusing on QUality of Spoken discourse in Aphasia) working group. 

The symposium will consist of four presentations:

1. Results of a recent survey of clinicians and researchers from across the globe, highlighting barriers and future directions for spoken discourse analysis in aphasia, and tying this analysis together with prior surveys from different countries;
2. Discuss virtual, remote platforms to obtain test-retest spoken discourse data from persons with aphasia and those without brain damage, and then will discuss psychometric properties of spoken discourse outcomes (i.e., rater and test-retest reliability) across two studies;
3. Highlight discourse outcome measures (e.g., core lexicon, main concept analysis, and a new measure, main concept, sequencing and story grammar; Richardson et al., 2021) and their clinical utility;
4. Discuss best practices for systematic reporting of spoken discourse research in aphasia (results of an eDelphi study) and by highlighting next directions for the field.

The goals of this symposium are to (1) highlight the usefulness of spoken discourse analysis, whilst also pointing out barriers and future directions to address such barriers, (2) identify a variety of discourse outcomes with strong psychometric properties, and (3) improve on the ability to draw overarching conclusions about spoken discourse analysis and its utility within aphasia assessment and treatment, by highlighting best practices that encourage replicability and reproducibility, as well as enhance the ability to conduct meta-analyses of studies in the field.