When evaluating children with impaired hearing, instruments based on parent’s observations on their child’s auditory functioning are needed for complementing the clinical audiological measurements. Especially, information about the everyday life performance is important when estimating the sound localization ability of children with unilateral hearing impairments.
Objectives
The aim of this study was to explore psychometric properties of two parental questionnaires intended to measure children’s auditory functioning and whether they would reveal similar results in different countries. Data collection first focused on children aged 4 to 5 years and their age-appropriate functional performance.
Methods
Participants were 4- to 5-year-old children with normal hearing in Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Australia. Parental questionnaires PEACH+ Rating Scale and SSQ-P were used to collect the data. In Finland, questionnaires were administered either in Finnish or North Sámi. With its 12 items, PEACH+ charts child’s listening behaviour, e.g., speech recognition in quiet and noisy conditions. SSQ-P has 23 items and three subscales (A. Speech, B. Spatial hearing, and C. Other qualities of hearing). Parents were requested to fill out the PEACH+ questionnaire by themselves, while, after one-week parental observation periods, the SSQ-P questionnaire subscales were filled out by the parents or the researcher during short remote interviews following each of the three observation weeks. The study incorporated the standard translation and back-translation processes during the translation of the questionnaires into Finnish, North Sámi, Norwegian and Swedish. Both online and paper form were used to administer the questionnaires.
Results
Kruskal-Wallis Test showed that there were significant differences in the PEACH+ Rating Scale total scores between Norwegian (n = 86) and Finnish (n = 60) and North Sámi (n = 12) data when data on 4- and 5-year-olds were compared across countries. However, on e.g., different SSQ-P A Scale items, there were only minor differences between Norwegian (n = 12), Finnish (n = 23), North Sámi (n = 12) and Australian (n = 24) data.
Conclusion
Age norms for different language versions of PEACH+ might be needed but, same SSQ-P norms could be suited to be used in different language contexts. More data will be shown and discussed.

Parental evaluation of 4- to 5-year-old children’s daily auditory functioning – A cross-linguistic study

It is with great pleasure and enthusiasm, that on behalf of the Cochlear Implant centers of the Radboud UMC in Nijmegen and Erasmus MC Sophia Children’s Hospital in Rotterdam to invite you to attend the 16th European Symposium on Pediatric Cochlear Implantation to Rotterdam, the Netherlands in 2023.

Yours sincerely, on behalf of the CI Centers at Radboud UMC and Erasmus MC,