AN EVALUATION OF THE QUALITY OF LIFE OF HEARING IMPAIRED CHILDREN ATTENDING SPECIAL SCHOOLS IN THE SERBIAN EDUCATION SYSTEM

Abstract

Quality of life is vague and difficult to define, since individual goals, in addition to economic, cultural, religious and educational factors, also have a dominant influence. This study is aimed to determine the differences in the responses received on the quality of life of deaf and hard-of-hearing children and to show which of the two social protections, family or boarding school, provides better conditions for the assessment of the quality of life of these children. The methods used in data processing included descriptive statistics and statistical analysis (Cronbach α, t-test and Pearson's correlation coefficient). All statistical analyses were performed in the statistical program SSPS 19. The sample consisted of 61 students in special schools for deaf children who were examined using a paediatric questionnaire about quality of life (Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory TM – PedsQL, version 4.0). The results: With children who were housed in dormitories of special schools for deaf children, during their education we obtained less pronounced results ranging from 0,70 on the sub-scale of psycho-social health to 0,81 on the social scale. Conclusion: The obtained results indicate that children with hearing impairment who are housed in the dormitories of schools for the deaf during their education have a favourable opinion of the quality of their lives, irrespective of the fact that they live in a dormitory compared to children who live with their families.