The Effectiveness of Parental Questionnaires in the Assessment of Speech-Language and Auditory Function in Children

Abstract

Objective: This study investigates the use of a parental questionnaire to determine its effectiveness as a screening tool in identifying speech-language and/or auditory impairments in children. Patients and Methods: Parents completed speech-language (n = 36) or audiology (n = 23) questionnaires prior to their child’s speech-language and/or auditory evaluations. The speech-language and audiology evaluations were conducted by clinicians at three different universities not familiar with the administration and scoring of the parental questionnaires. A research assistant coded the results of the speech-language and audiology evaluations. Statistical analysis was used to determine if any aspects of the parents’ evaluation of their child’s speech, language, or hearing correlated with the speech-language pathologists’/audiologists’ assessment. The results of the analyses would indicate whether parental reports are a reliable alternative to professionals’ assessment. Results: The speech-language questionnaires for children aged 2–5 years revealed the parents’ perception of their children speaking 3-word sentences significantly (p < 0.05) corresponded to the children’s comprehension and expression skills. The results from the auditory questionnaires revealed that reports of a child’s ear pain were (p < 0.05) correlated with auditory dysfunction. Conclusions: These questionnaires can potentially be used in low-income countries where professional resources are scarce and there are barriers to identifying children with speech-language and/or auditory impairment.

Reliability of parental assessment of auditory skills in young children: a cross-sectional study in Italian language

“…Few isolated attempts were made to create questionnaires for parents to specifically evaluate hearing sensitivity and function in normally developing preschool children in order to identify children with speech-language and/or auditory impairment. [16][17][18] These questionnaires were proposed as a low-cost screening tool to complement NHS. All mentioned questionnaires covered a relatively large age span without specific focus on the developmental course of auditory and language skills in the first years of life.…”