The Chinese Hearing Questionnaire for School Children

Abstract

Hearing loss is the most common of all disabilities in China, with three million of the 1.4 billion population affected. Recently, the release of an official neonatal hearing screening consensus has drawn attention to the importance of continued surveillance throughout childhood and the need for a system that is suited to the Chinese situation. The current research aimed to develop and evaluate a questionnaire for mass screening of school children in China. In Jiangsu Province, 317 rural students were screened using the Chinese Hearing Questionnaire for School Children (CHQS) and otoacoustic emissions (OAE). Test performance measures for the questionnaire method revealed average overall accuracy (A' = 0.54), while higher system accuracy was obtained for the OAEs (A' = 0.85). The OAE screening also produced very high efficiency and specificity values with reasonable sensitivity. Unlike the OAE protocol, the CHQS will require substantial modification to improve its sensitivity prior to utilization as a mass screening tool.