Validation of the Persian version of the LittlEARS auditory questionnaire for assessment of auditory development in children with normal hearing.

OBJECTIVES

To adapt the LittlEARS Auditory Questionnaire into Persian and evaluate the psychometric properties of the Persian version of the questionnaire for children with normal hearing.

METHODS

A "back-translation" method was used to translate and adapt the LittlEARS Auditory Questionnaire into Persian. The translated version was first evaluated by means of an expert-appraisal method. After having improved the Persian version of LittlEARs with the results obtained from that evaluation, various psychometric analyses were carried out to determine the validity and reliability. A group of 240 Persian speaking parents of children below 24 months of age with normal hearing completed the LittlEARS Auditory Questionnaire. Various psychometric analyses (scale analysis and item analysis) were conducted.

RESULTS

In the current study, the following scale and item characteristics were investigated: Corrected item-total correlations ranged from 0.14 to 0.74; Cronbach's alpha coefficient value was 0.960; the split-half reliability r was 0.734; predictive accuracy Guttman's lambda was 0.965; the correlation between the overall score and age of the children was 0.808 (p < 0.001). The regression curve, which reflects the age-dependence of auditory behavior, was produced. The regression analysis that was conducted to obtain normative data showed that 80% of the variance in the total scores could be explained by age.

CONCLUSION

The data obtained from psychometric analysis support the use of the Persian version of the LittlEARS Auditory Questionnaire as a reliable and valid tool to assess the development of auditory behavior in Persian speaking children who are 24 months old or younger.