Comparison of the Auditory Processing Domains (APDQ) and Evaluation of Children's Listening and Processing Skills (ECLiPS) Questionnaires.

Purdy, J.; Wright, M.; Woodman, J.; Levy, E.

Objectives: Up to 7 percent of all school age children suffer from issues with auditory processing of information. These children cannot process what they hear in the same way as other children resulting in significant difficulty in an educational setting. Gathering information from parents/educators about the conditions in which these children falter is most often obtained via a questionnaire. Two questionnaires have been used routinely by our department: The Auditory Processing Domains Questionnaire (APDQ) and Evaluation of Children's Listening and Processing Skills (ECLiPS) Questionnaire. Completion of multiple questionnaires is time consuming and not well liked by families. This study allowed us to compare these two commercially available questionnaires in order to determine which provided the greatest degree of specificity in identifying auditory processing disorders as well as co-disorders. We hoped to determine which parent questionnaire aligned most closely with the patient's clinical diagnosis on the variables of Auditory Processing Disorder (APD), Attention Deficit Hyperacidity Disorder, (ADHD), Nonspecific Learning Disability (NOS) and Language Disorder (LD) as well as final/overall diagnosis. Material: Parents were asked to complete two questionnaires as part of our APD evaluation process: The Auditory Processing Domains Questionnaire (APDQ) and the Evaluation of Children's Listening and Processing Skills Questionnaire (ECLiPS). Methods: We analyzed data from all pediatric patients who were assessed for Auditory Processing Disorders during the time period July 1, 2018 -- July 1, 2019 whose families completed both questionnaires, with a total of 42 patient's data included in this study. Chart review allowed us to identify previous diagnosis of APD, ADHD, No-S and LD. We compared predictability for group performance for each of these variables for both questionnaires. Results: Results from parental questionnaires were very reflective of professional diagnosis for these children. Overall, the APDQ had greater predictability for final/overall diagnosis of the patient (88% agreement for the APDQ vs 21% for the ECLiPS). It was also more predictive for APD (68% vs 62%) ADHD (78% vs 47%), No-S (85% vs 56%) and LD (85% vs 35%). Conclusions: Obtaining a chart review for these complicated children revealed an essential flaw in our comparison: for some diagnoses, parental report served as the factor that created the diagnosis (i.e., many children had not received formal evaluation for issues such as non-specific learning disability). We believe that education-particularly to primary care physicians/pediatricians is critical in insuring that children receive the assessments required to create formal evaluation and treatment. Based on the results previously presented, our team has adopted using the ADHQ only with our APD assessments. In addition to parents found the APDQ required less time to complete but it more accurately correlated with patient diagnosis for other non-APD variables as well as our diagnosis following APD assessment.

POLAND; DIAGNOSIS of learning disabilities; LANGUAGE disorder diagnosis; RESEARCH methodology evaluation; CONFERENCES & conventions; WORD deafness; ATTENTION-deficit hyperactivity disorder; QUESTIONNAIRES; SENSITIVITY & specificity (Statistics); CHILDREN

Journal of Hearing Science, 2022, Vol 12, Issue 1, p131

2083-389X

Academic Journal