Children with chronic non-progressive encephalopathy: hearing evaluation and hearing aids

French adaptation and validation of parents' evaluation of aural/oral performance of children (PEACH) scale in children

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.