PP1104 - The Hearing Evaluation Reference

Speech audiometry is essential when assessing children with hearing loss and measuring outcomes of their hearing devices. The aim of this project is to provide a platform that makes appropriate speech materials accessible to audiologists providing audiological evaluations to Arabic-speaking children.

Based on the feedback received from 2 questionnaires, an application for delivering speech tests to pediatric patients was developed and currently offers the Arabic version of the CAPT (Rayes et.al., 2019) to assess speech perception of the children at the clinic or home. An ongoing evaluation of the application is being conducted.


Summary:

Background and Aim

Speech audiometry is essential when assessing children with hearing loss and measuring outcomes of their hearing devices. The aim of this project is to provide a platform that makes appropriate speech materials accessible to audiologists providing audiological evaluations to Arabic-speaking children.

Method
1. Determine the relevance
A questionnaire, adapted but modified from Parmar et. al. (2022), was distributed to the audiologists in Saudi Arabia. The questionnaire aimed to evaluate audiologists' practices during pediatric speech assessments and to gain a better understanding of obstacles that may interfere with the delivery of speech testing.

2. Developing the application

The Hearing Evaluation Reference was designed for Android and iOS offering a user-friendly platform accessible by audiologists and, when necessary, families at home.

3- Evaluating the application

A questionnaire is being distributed to audiologists to evaluate the application in terms clinical value and user experience.

Results

Thirty-four audiologists responded to the questionnaire. Ninety-one percent of the participants believed that speech tests are beneficial for pediatric assessment, and they reported a significant lack of speech materials. Furthermore, 82% of the participants stated that they would perform speech testing if speech materials were accessible.

Based on the feedback, an application for delivering speech tests to pediatric patients was developed and is available in the Apple-Store and Google-Play for smartphones, iPads, and tablets. Currently, the application offers the Arabic version of the CAPT (Rayes et.al., 2019), and the Arabic version of the DaipixUK (Baker, R., Hazan,, 2011). With this application audiologists can assess speech perception or assign aural rehab tasks for the family and their child. Moreover, with the help of parents, audiologists can assess speech perception of the children at home, a feature of the application that can be helpful with ‘uncooperative children’; an obstacle that may interfere with conducting pediatric speech assessment at the clinic as audiologists reported in the questionnaire.

Evaluating the application is still ongoing and expected to be completed no later than January 2024

Conclusions

The application is evidently needed and would be used by at least 80% of the audiologists in routine pediatric evaluation. The application can be a platform for other languages however validation of the application’s reliability is still ongoing.

Conflict of Interest

No conflict of interests to be declared
Keywords: Speech audiometry, Pediatric Audiology, Outcome measures, and Arabic Speech Test