Hearing Impairment and School Engagement Outcomes in US Children

Abstract

Ensuring appropriate school engagement for deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) children in the US is important for improving their long-term outcomes as they grow into adults. To examine the associations between hearing loss (HL), its sequelae (speech and/or language disorders, behavioral and/or conduct problems, and neuropsychiatric and/or learning disorders), and various school engagement measures among school-aged children in the US. This cross-sectional study combined data from the nationally representative 2016-2021 National Survey of Children's Health. A total of 155 178 randomly selected children (weighted, approximately 49 340 700 children) aged 6 to 17 years with a parent or caregiver who responded to an address-based survey by mail or online were included. All analyses were weighted to account for the probability of selection and nonresponse and to reflect population-based estimates representative of all noninstitutionalized school-aged US children and adolescents residing in housing units. Diverse school engagement measures, including extracurricular participation in sports, clubs, paid work, volunteer work, and organized lessons, as well as educational performance variables, including missed school days, not caring about doing well in school, not doing required homework, grade repetition, and parent or guardian contacted by school. Of the estimated 49 340 700 children aged 6 to 17 years (41.1% aged 6-10 years; 51.1% male; 54.7% without underrepresented minority status), an estimated 1.4% (95% CI, 1.2%-1.5%) were reported by their parent or guardian to have deafness or hearing problems. Having DHH status was associated with significantly worse outcomes on 8 of 10 school engagement measures (eg, participation in sports: adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 0.75 [95% CI, 0.60-0.93]; missed school days: AOR, 2.98 [95% CI, 2.21-4.00]), even after adjustment for age, sex, underrepresented minority status, highest educational level of parent or guardian, federal poverty level of the household, and primary language in the household. Moreover, although subgroup analyses of DHH children with and without HL sequelae revealed significant differences (speech and/or language disorder: AOR, 5.83 [95% CI, 4.31-7.89]; behavioral and/or conduct problem: AOR, 2.75 [95% CI, 2.10-3.60]; neuropsychiatric and/or learning disorder: AOR, 3.06 [95% CI, 2.39-3.91]), HL sequelae only partially mediated the associations between these disparities. In this cross-sectional study, DHH status itself may have been the primary factor directly associated with school engagement disparities. These findings suggest the need for greater emphasis on educational accommodations and support for hearing status itself, independent of the presence or absence of HL sequelae.