A study investigating the use of a teachers' questionnaire and a hearing history questionnaire to rate pupil's skills in auditory comprehension, attentive listening and speech discrimination

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether teachers could accurately rate children's auditory comprehension, attentive listening and speech discrimination skills over a 12 month period using a questionnaire. A hearing history questionnaire was also used to investigate whether a significant history of hearing difficulties would affect scores of auditory comprehension and speech perception and whether the teachers' ratings would reflect any hearing difficulties. 56 children from a cohort of 307 pupils aged from 4.4 - 5.5 years were selected as they had the weakest profile across assessments of verbal comprehension and speech discrimination. The children were followed over a 12 month period. Assessments of auditory comprehension and speech discrimination and teachers questionnaires took place at three points during this period. The hearing history questionnaire was completed at the beginning of the program by the children's parents. We found that teachers' ratings of auditory comprehension and attentive listening skills significantly correlated with standardised test scores at the first and last period of testing but not at the middle period. No correlation was found between the teachers ratings of speech discrimination and formal tests of speech discrimination. Significant negative correlation was found between scores on the hearing history questionnaire and scores obtained on the formal test of speech discrimination. No other significant correlation was found with the hearing history questionnaire. Explanations for these findings are discussed and the implications of this study are considered for both Speech and Language Therapists and Teachers. This study supports the use of the hearing history questionnaire in conjunction with the teachers' questionnaire in order get a comprehensive picture of the child's skills in auditory comprehension, attentive listening and speech discrimination