The Chinese version of the parents’ evaluation of aural/oral performance of children (PEACH) rating scale for infants and children with normal hearing

Objective: This study aimed to establish Chinese norms for the Chinese version of the Parent’s Evaluation of Aural/Oral of Children (PEACH) rating scale. 

Design and study sample: The PEACH scores were collected from 198 parents whose children have normal hearing. The test-retest reliability of the PEACH scale was evaluated in a subgroup of 34 parents. Another 27 parents also filled out a Putonghua Communicative Development Inventory which was used to explore the relationship between the PEACH ratings and language scores. 

Results: The normative curve was established using a logit regression function. The total scores increase rapidly with increasing age. A plateau starts from 22 months with the PEACH score reaching 90% and achieves the maximum score of 95% by 47 months of age. The test-retest analyses showed high reliability for all subscales, with all the correlation coefficients values exceeding 0.9 (p < 0.01). The 90% and 95% confidence intervals were provided to facilitate evaluation of differences between scores obtained under different conditions. A significant correlation was found between the PEACH total score and language performance (p < 0.05). 

Conclusions: Normative data from the Chinese population was provided to enable performance of an individual child to be related to their normally hearing peers.