Parent-Child Agreement on Quality of Life in Children With Hearing Loss Using the HEAR-QL

Objective: We explored whether children with hearing loss (HL) and their parents perceive the child's quality of life (QOL) similarly using the Hearing Environment And Reflections on Quality of Life (HEAR-QL) survey. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Setting: Pediatric otolaryngology clinic. Patients: 7 to 14 year old children with unilateral or bilateral HL and their parents. Interventions: None. Main Outcome Measure: The HEAR-QL is a validated hearing-related QOL survey and has three domains and total score, ranging from 0 to 100; higher scores indicate higher QOL. Results: HEAR-QL total score (r = 0.520, p = 0.011), Activities (r = 0.608, p = 0.002), and Feelings (r = 0.657, p = 0.001) domains correlated strongly, but the hearing Environments domain (r = 0.291, p = 0.178) correlated weakly. Children with mild HL scored total and Environments domains lower than their parents (mean difference [MD] -13.9 [95% CI -34.3, 6.6] and -19.2 [95% CI -41.2, 2.7]; Hedge's g 0.67, 0.77, respectively) compared to children with moderate-to-severe HL (moderate HL MD 8.3 [95% CI -15.7, 32.4] and 13.1 [95% CI -25.2, 51.5]; severe HL MD 9.5 [95% CI 0.6, 18.4] and 14.4 [95% CI 4.3, 24.6]). Discussion: Children and their parents correlated strongly on observable Feelings And Activities domains scores but correlated weakly on hearing difficulty in Environments scores. Parents of children with mild HL perceived their children's QOL to be better than the children themselves, differing from the moderate-to-severe HL groups.

Automated summary

The study found that parents of children with mild hearing loss perceived their children's quality of life to be better than the children themselves did, while children with moderate-to-severe hearing loss had similar perceptions.