Hindi language tool for assessing pediatric cochlear implant recipients

Introduction: Presently, in India, western material is mainly used for the assessment and planning of habilitation activities for paediatric cochlear implant (CI) recipients. There is no assessment material available in Hindi. Therefore, the present study aimed to develop a parental questionnaire to assess auditory, speech and language skills of paediatric CI recipients in Hindi language for the age range of 3-7 years.

Method: Most commonly used assessment material/curricula used in Indian cochlear implant clinics and primary school Hindi language teachers were consulted during the development of the parental questionnaire. The developed questionnaire was then given to the parents of 50 normal hearing, Hindi speaking children in the age range of 3-7 years, five experienced speech and language pathologist working in the field of paediatric CI and to the same primary school Hindi language teachers who were consulted in the beginning to validate the content of the questionnaire. Based on the feedback from parents, personal observations and views from other professionals, the questionnaire was modified to incorporate the suggestions and the questionnaire was finalized. The final questionnaire has three subtests (1, 2 and 3) to assess auditory, language and speech skills of the CI recipients respectively. The final questionnaire was given to the Hindi speaking parents of 50 CI recipients in the age range of 3-7 years who fulfilled the eligibility criteria. Both the parents were asked to fill the final questionnaire together in the clinic at 0 (switch-on), 1, 6 and 12 months post switch-on of the implant.

Result and discussion: All the cochlear implant recipients could be evaluated by the questionnaire and none of the recipient scored zero on the questionnaire at any time interval. The developed questionnaire had shown high reliability and internal consistency producing alpha values of 0.9201, 0.7425 and 0.9311 for the subtest 1, 2 and the entire questionnaire respectively. The alpha value was not calculated for subtest 3 as it was a rating scale and not much variation was noticed in this section.