Validation of the Chinese Translation of the Spatial Hearing Questionnaire and Its Short Form.

PURPOSE: Few questionnaires address how to measure spatial hearing ability in complex listening situations. The purpose of the study was (a) to validate the Chinese translation of the Spatial Hearing Questionnaire (C-SHQ) among Chinese participants and (b) to provide a shortened version for the purpose of clinical screening.

METHOD: This was a cross-sectional study. The C-SHQ was developed from the process of translation and back-translation of the original 24-item, English version (Tyler, Perreau, & Ji, 2009). The C-SHQ was administered to 146 patients at the Department of Otolaryngology Clinic of Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital between October 2013 and May 2014 at Sichuan, China. Exploratory factor analysis and reliability tests were performed for the full version, and confirmatory factor analysis was applied for the shortened version of the C-SHQ.

RESULTS: The exploratory factor analysis revealed scores loaded on 3 similar factors compared with the original SHQ. The internal consistency reliability was high (Cronbach's α = 0.99). The confirmatory factor analysis indicated that a shortened version of 12 items is sufficient to measure spatial hearing abilities.

CONCLUSIONS: The C-SHQ and its short form are both reliable and valid questionnaires, which are suitable for both research and clinical settings to measure spatial hearing ability in the Chinese population.