Comparison of Children At-Risk for Auditory Processing Disorder between Urban and Rural Schools

Abstract

Aim: The aim of the study was to compare the number of children at-risk for APD in rural and urban government schools and determine the link between at-risk for APD and family literacy / educational support. Additionally, the study compared the knowledge teachers have regarding APD across rural and urban government schools. Methods: The study was carried out in three phases. In the first phase, two different questionnaires were developed, one related to teachers' knowledge of APD, and the other related to family literacy and educational support provided to the children at home. The second phase involved evaluation of knowledge regarding APD from 92 teachers (37 teachers from rural & 55 teachers from urban schools). In the third phase, 2029 primary school-going children from rural (N = 899) and urban (N = 1130) government schools were screened using the Screening Checklist for Auditory Processing (Yathiraj & Mascarenhas, 2003, 2004. The children were classified into 4 ages groups. Information on family literacy and educational support provided at home for all the participants were obtained from the teachers. Results: A significantly higher number of children were found to be at-risk for APD in rural government schools than in the urban government schools. In the urban schools, across different age groups, a significant difference in number of children at-risk for APD was noted. No such difference was observed in the rural schools. Further, a significant negative correlation was seen between educational support / family literacy and SCAP scores, with it being moderate in rural schools and weak in urban schools. Additionally, family literacy and educational support were found to be higher in rural schools than urban schools in children who were not at-risk for APD. However, in children at-risk for APD, educational support was observed to be more in rural than urban schools but family literacy was similar across both locations. Also, teachers in rural schools were found to have more knowledge of APD when compared to teachers in urban schools. A significant negative moderate correlation was found between years of experience and knowledge of APD in teachers from rural schools. However, no such difference was noticed in urban school-teachers. Conclusions: The study indicated that the number of children at-risk for APD varied across rural and urban government schools. Family literacy and educational support given to children at home may influence the presence of symptoms of APD present in children. It needs to be further evaluated whether symptoms of APD influence the educational outcome of children in schools.