Abstract
Ear infection or otitis media (OM) occurs in many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children at a young age and tends to persist over a long period of time. Chronic OM is associated with conductive hearing loss that reduces a child’s access to sounds. This can have a negative impact on development of listening and communication skills. Primary health and early childhood workers are best positioned to detect children with hearing and listening problems. However, they lack appropriate tools to screen and triage young children for early referral. By using a co-design approach with Aboriginal primary health workers and early childhood teachers, we have developed the Parents’ Evaluation of Listening and Understanding Measure (PLUM) listening skills questionnaire. The PLUM provides a systematic framework for front-line workers to explore a parent’s observations of their child’s listening behaviour in everyday situations to detect hearing and listening problems in young Aboriginal children. This paper reports the development of the scale. PLUM scores for 438 children from urban, regional and remote communities in Australia were collected. The internal consistency reliability was 0.87. Normative data from 235 children with normal hearing (hearing thresholds averaged between 0.5 and 4 kHz in the better ear to be no greater than 20 dB HL) were used to define the relationship between PLUM scores and age. The functions allow performance of individual children to be related to their normal-hearing peers.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 288-304 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Deafness and Education International |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Oct 2020 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which the reported work was conducted, and pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging. The authors wish to thank the children and families that participated in this study. We thank all the clinicians of the Hearing Assessment Program and Outreach services in Hearing Australia for their assistance with this study. We also thank Michele Clapin, leader of the Hearing Assessment Program, for her support for this study. We are grateful to Caroline Jones, Eugenie Collyer, Chantelle Khamchuang, and Jaidine Fejo for their contributions to the co-design workshops, data collection, and filming of a training video. We are grateful to all the healthcare workers and early education carers and teachers from Tharawal Aboriginal Corporation in Sydney, Wurli-Wurlinjang and Binjari Aboriginal in Katherine, and Birra-Li Aboriginal Maternal and Child Health Service in Newcastle who contributed to this study through participation in co-design workshops and data collection. We thank all the staff at Hunter ENT for providing a location and for supporting the filming of a training video for the PLUM and HATS tools. This research was funded by the Prime Minister and Cabinet Grant and the Health Discretionary Fund of the Department of Health in Australia. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which the reported work was conducted, and pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging. The authors wish to thank the children and families that participated in this study. We thank all the clinicians of the Hearing Assessment Program and Outreach services in Hearing Australia for their assistance with this study. We also thank Michele Clapin, leader of the Hearing Assessment Program, for her support for this study. We are grateful to Caroline Jones, Eugenie Collyer, Chantelle Khamchuang, and Jaidine Fejo for their contributions to the co-design workshops, data collection, and filming of a training video. We are grateful to all the healthcare workers and early education carers and teachers from Tharawal Aboriginal Corporation in Sydney, Wurli-Wurlinjang and Binjari Aboriginal in Katherine, and Birra-Li Aboriginal Maternal and Child Health Service in Newcastle who contributed to this study through participation in co-design workshops and data collection. We thank all the staff at Hunter ENT for providing a location and for supporting the filming of a training video for the PLUM and HATS tools. This research was funded by the Prime Minister and Cabinet Grant and the Health Discretionary Fund of the Department of Health in Australia.
Funding Information:
We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which the reported work was conducted, and pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging. The authors wish to thank the children and families that participated in this study. We thank all the clinicians of the Hearing Assessment Program and Outreach services in Hearing Australia for their assistance with this study. We also thank Michele Clapin, leader of the Hearing Assessment Program, for her support for this study. We are grateful to Caroline Jones, Eugenie Collyer, Chantelle Khamchuang, and Jaidine Fejo for their contributions to the co-design workshops, data collection, and filming of a training video. We are grateful to all the healthcare workers and early education carers and teachers from Tharawal Aboriginal Corporation in Sydney, Wurli-Wurlinjang and Binjari Aboriginal in Katherine, and Birra-Li Aboriginal Maternal and Child Health Service in Newcastle who contributed to this study through participation in co-design workshops and data collection. We thank all the staff at Hunter ENT for providing a location and for supporting the filming of a training video for the PLUM and HATS tools. This research was funded by the Prime Minister and Cabinet Grant and the Health Discretionary Fund of the Department of Health in Australia.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
Keywords
- parent report
- listening skills
- hearing
- otitis media
- Indigenous hearing health
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children
- PLUM