Parents' evaluation of aural/oral performance of children (PEACH) scale in the Malay language: data for normal-hearing children.

UNLABELLED

The parents' evaluation of aural/oral performance of children (PEACH) scale was developed to assess the effectiveness of amplification for children, based on a systematic use of parents' observations of children's performance in real-world environments.

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of the present study was to adapt the PEACH scale into the Malay language, and to collect normative data on a group of children with normal hearing.

STUDY SAMPLE

The participants were parents of 74 children aged between 3 months and 13 years of age. Parents were requested to observe their children's auditory/oral behavior in everyday life and to record their observations in the PEACH booklet.

RESULTS

High internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.93) and item-total correlation were found (0.52-0.85). Similar to the published norms for English-speaking children, near-perfect scores were achieved by Malaysian children around 40 months of age.

CONCLUSIONS

The adapted version can be used to evaluate amplification for children in the Malay speaking environment. The normative curve relating age to scores for the Malay PEACH can be used as a reference against which functional aural/oral performance of hearing-impaired Malaysian children can be evaluated.