Auditory Behavior in Everyday Life (ABEL) questionnaire in Hebrew and in Arabic and its association with clinical
Background:
The aim of this study was to describe the results of the Auditory Behavior in Everyday Life (ABEL) questionnaire adapted to Hebrew and to Arabic and its association to clinical test results in children with cochlear implants. As assessment of hearing by audiometry does not always adequately reflect performance in daily life, questionnaires have been developed to assess functioning in natural surroundings and to track progress. In order to evaluate cochlear-implanted children's verbal and communicative abilities, the parental ABEL questionnaire was developed in 2002. The advantages of the ABEL questionnaire are that it is intended for a wide age range, is quick to administer, and is filled out by parents themselves.
Methods:
The ABEL questionnaire was translated into Hebrew and into Arabic and routinely used in the clinic. A total of 61 questionnaires were thus filled out by parents of children with cochlear implants (ages 3.9-14.3 years) when they came for routine mapping. Retrospectively, data were analyzed and questionnaire results were compared with performance with the implant on several clinical tests: audiometric thresholds, discrimination (percentage) of vowel-consonant-vowel nonsense syllables, and results of speech perception tests with monosyllabic and bisyllabic words and with sentences in quiet and in noise.
Results:
A correlation was found between the different sections of the questionnaire, and age at implantation had a significant effect on questionnaire scores. However, correlations between questionnaire score and clinical tests were found only for speech perception tests in noise and not in quiet or to audiogram and speech reception threshold.
Conclusions:
As has been reported previously, self-evaluation or parental evaluation does not always correlate with all measured results of hearing performance. However, the subjective information collected through questionnaires can be valuable for evaluation of progress, for counseling and rehabilitation training, as well as for mapping.
