RP401 - Development and Validation of the Hearing and Functioning in Everyday Life Questionnaire

Saturday, April 22, 2023

9:15 AM – 9:45 AM PDT

Location: Tahoma 5 ** 800 Pike

Earn 0.05 CEUs

Lead Presenter(s)

Elin Karlsson, PhD (she/her/hers)

Reg. Audiologist and Researcher
Region Örebro county
Örebro University

Financial Disclosures: I do not have any relevant financial relationships with anything to disclose.
Non-Financial Disclosures: I do not have any relevant non-financial relationships with anything to disclose.

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Contributor(s)

EM

Elina Mäki-Torkko (she/her/hers)

Professor
:Örebro university School of Medical Sciences
Örebro, Sweden

Financial Disclosures: I do not have any relevant financial relationships with anything to disclose.
Non-Financial Disclosures: I do not have any relevant non-financial relationships with anything to disclose.
Sarah Granberg, PhD (she/her/hers)

Assistant professor
School of health sciences, Faculty of medicine and health, Örebro University, Sweden
School of health Sciences, Örebro University, Sweden

Financial Disclosures: I do not have any relevant financial relationships with anything to disclose.
Non-Financial Disclosures: I do not have any relevant non-financial relationships with anything to disclose.
SW

Stephen E. Widén, PhD (he/him/his)

Senior Lecturer
Örebro university
Institution of Health Sciences, Sweden

Financial Disclosures: I do not have any relevant financial relationships with anything to disclose.
Non-Financial Disclosures: No non-financial disclosures
Vinaya Manchaiah, Professor

Professor and Director of Audiology
University of Colorado School of Medicine, Colorado

Financial Disclosures: I do not have any relevant financial relationships with anything to disclose.
Non-Financial Disclosures: I do not have any relevant non-financial relationships with anything to disclose.
Vinay Swarnalatha Nagaraj, PhD (he/him/his)

Professor
Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Financial Disclosures: I do not have any relevant financial relationships with anything to disclose.
Non-Financial Disclosures: I do not have any relevant non-financial relationships with anything to disclose.
Melissa Selb, MSc (she/her/hers)

Swiss Paraplegic Research

Financial Disclosures: I do not have any relevant financial relationships with anything to disclose.
Non-Financial Disclosures: I do not have any relevant non-financial relationships with anything to disclose.
De Wet Swanepoel, PhD

Professor
Department of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, University of Pretoria
University of Pretoria
Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa

Financial Disclosures: I do not have any relevant financial relationships with anything to disclose.
Non-Financial Disclosures: I do not have any relevant non-financial relationships with anything to disclose.
Krishna Yerraguntla, PhD (he/him/his)

Professor
College of Applied Medical Sciences, King Khalid University
College of Applied Medical Sciences, King Khalid University
Abha, Asir, Saudi Arabia

Financial Disclosures: I do not have any relevant financial relationships with anything to disclose.
Non-Financial Disclosures: I do not have any relevant non-financial relationships with anything to disclose.
JG

Johanna Gustafsson

Financial Disclosures: I do not have any relevant financial relationships with anything to disclose.
Non-Financial Disclosures: I do not have any relevant non-financial relationships with anything to disclose.

Contributor (Not Presenting)(s)

M Kathleen Pichora-Fuller, PhD

Professor
University of Toronto
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada

I do not have any relevant financial / non-financial relationships with any proprietary interests.

Abstract:
The study describes the development process and content validation of the new self-assessment instrument, Hearing and Functioning in Everyday Life Questionnaire (HFEQ). HFEQ was developed in an international collaboration, consist of 30 items and is based on the Brief ICF Core Set for Hearing Loss. Overall, the study demonstrated satisfying results and HFEQ was considered as valid (relevance, comprehensiveness and comprehensibility) for adults with hearing loss. The HFEQ has potential to become a valuable instrument for assessing everyday functioning in people with hearing loss in audiological rehabilitation and in research.

Summary:
Objectives
To be able to capture the complexity of living with hearing loss and to have a multidimensional (bio-psycho-social) approach within audiological rehabilitation (WHO, 2021), everyday functioning has been shown to be an important phenomenon to measure (Alfakir & Holmes, 2017; van Leeuwen et al., 2020; Karlsson et al. 2021). Everyday functioning is defined as an individual’s experience of how well different parts in everyday life (body functions, activity, participation and environmental factors) interplay from a hearing perspective (Karlsson et al., 2022).

Self-assessment instruments are commonly used within audiological rehabilitation (Montano, 2007) and can be used to assess different aspects related to audiological rehabilitation (such as individual needs or assessment of intervention effects). Many different self-report instruments, measuring different consequences of hearing loss, have been developed and used within audiological rehabilitation (Bentler & Kramer, 2000; Granberg et al., 2014), including patient-reported outcome measures (Barker et al., 2015). However, there has been a lack of multi-dimensionality in existing outcome measures, with the consequence that they only partially capture aspects of functioning in everyday life for people living with hearing loss (e.g., Manchaiah et al, 2019).

Aim
The aim of the current study was to develop a new self-assessment instrument (the Hearing and Functioning in Everyday Life questionnaire (HFEQ)), with the purpose to assess the everyday functioning of adults with hearing loss for use in clinical audiological settings as well as within research on adults with hearing loss. Moreover, the aim was to investigate the content validity of HFEQ.

Design
The design was a two-part instrument development study. The first part focused on the item-generation process during an experts’ workshop, and the second part focused on international content validation of HFEQ, using group interviews. For the content validation, strategic sampling was used; 30 adults with hearing loss from India, South Africa, and the United States participated in the group interviews. The results were analysed by qualitative content analysis using the methodology recommended by Drennan (2002) and Knafl et al. (2007).

Results
The expert’s workshop resulted in the first version of the HFEQ containing 30 items. The results from the group interviews showed that the content of the HFEQ was considered to be valid concerning its’ relevance, comprehensiveness and comprehensibility. A majority (73%) of the HFEQ items were perceived by the participants as relevant and easy to comprehend. For the remaining 27% of the items, the content was perceived to be relevant in all countries, but some terms and expressions were reported to require rewording or clearer examples.

Conclusion
The content validation of the HFEQ demonstrates promising results, with participants perceiving the content as relevant and comprehensible. Minor changes in wording and examples were suggested and will be made in the next step of the development process. Further psychometric validation is required to investigate other psychometric properties, such as construct validity and reliability. The HFEQ has the potential to become a valuable new instrument for assessing everyday functioning in people with hearing loss within audiological rehabilitation and in research.

Learning Objectives:

Upon completion, participants will be able to describe why it is important to use validated instruments within audiological rehabilitation.
Upon completion, participants will be able to describe why everyday functioning is an important aspect to include within audiology.
Upon completion, participants will be able to use the Hearing and Functioning in Everyday life Questionnaire (HFEQ).