Development of Questionnaire for Evaluating Hearing Aid Benefit in Children

Abstract

The study aimed to develop a questionnaire for evaluating hearing aid benefit in children and also to evaluate its usefulness as a measure of hearing aid benefit. The study was carried out in two phases ; Phase I, involved the development and standardization of the questionnaire and in phase II, the developed questionnaire was administered on mothers of 50 children (4-5 yrs) with hearing impairment using binaural .digital BTE hearing aids. Questionnaire was explained to mothers and asked to observe the response of their child for one week. The mother’s then rated their child based on the behavioral response. Results showed significant difference in mean percentage scores between unaided and aided condition, indicating observable hearing aid benefit. Thus the study showed that the hearing aid benefit questionnaire is an efficient tool in quantifying hearing aid benefit in children. There was higher mean percentage scores in the favorable condition compared to un favorable condition, which indicated less perceived hearing aid benefit in more difficult listening situations compared to he favorable listening situation. The developed questionnaire obtained a reliability value of > 75%for all the sub skills which indicated high test retest reliability of the questionnaire. Thus it can be concluded that the hearing aid benefit questionnaire is a reliable and valid measure of assessing hearing aid benefit in real life situations.