Objective: Hearing loss can seriously impact children's quality of life. Disease-specific questionnaires are required to optimise medical care. This study aims to translate, adapt and validate the French version of the PEACH score for the auditory performance of children.
Design: This is a controlled, prospective study, conducted between April and October 2020. The translation was conducted using a forward-backward technique, and statistical validation was conducted with a test and re-test, on a patient population and a control population.
Study sample: Patients were included if they were 1-11 years old, and had at least 30 dB hearing loss in one ear. The mean age was 6 years for the 39 patients and 3.9 years for the 34 controls.
Results: Reproducibility, measured by Spearman's coefficient between global scores of the test and re-test was 0.78 (p < 0.001). The test was internally consistent (Cronbach's alpha was 0.89) and item per item construct validity was satisfactory. The ROC curve showed a moderate area under the curve (0.74 p < 0.001) with 67% sensitivity and 73% specificity.
Conclusions: The French PEACH had good statistical properties, although a brief 13-item questionnaire, and can be used for evaluation of the disease-specific quality of life for young children with hearing loss.
Keywords: Quality of life; children; cochlear implants; hearing aids; hearing loss.