Development, Validation and Reliability of a Questionnaire to Assess Awareness, Knowledge, and Practice about Hearing Impairment Among School Teachers.

BACKGROUND: Hearing impairment is the most common congenital anomaly. It is well known that teachers are the corner pillar for inclusive education.

OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to develop a tool that evaluates awareness, knowledge, and practice about Hearing impairment among Teachers and to validate, and test the reliability of the questionnaire.

METHODS: A cross-sectional study design and convenient sampling was used to recruit 82 participants. The questionnaire was developed after a familiarity check from Kannada language experts then it was intended for content validation by 6 experts in the field of Audiology. The finalized questionnaire was filled by participants and tested for internal consistency and test-retest reliability.

RESULTS: In the current study finalized questionnaire consisted of 50 questions. The scale content validation index (S-CVI) was shown to be good with 0.944 S-CVI. The internal consistency showed moderate-good internal consistency in the independent section and very high overall reliability with a value of 0.898. Further test-retest reliability showed no significant difference (p>0.05) in independent and overall scores of test and retest sessions, respectively. Individual domain and total score intraclass coefficients revealed 'high' test-retest reliability.

CONCLUSION: The currently developed questionnaire in the Kannada language to assess teachers' awareness, knowledge, and practice about hearing impairment showed high reliability and validity, making it an efficient tool to assess the gaps between regular school teachers on children with hearing impairment.