Abstract
BackgroundSuccessful audiology service delivery depends on support from the community, and agreement to utilize hearing healthcare programs. Assessment of parents’ awareness regarding hearing loss (HL) and audiology services is necessary for the development of suitable hearing programs for children. Previous studies reported that early detection and intervention for hearing problems are typically strongly supported by parents. The current study sought to evaluate parents’ knowledge and attitudes regarding childhood HL and hearing services.MethodsA cross-sectional study conducted at five centers in Qassim region of Saudi Arabia. A self-report questionnaire was administered to collect demographic data in addition to 31 questions regarding the knowledge and attitudes of parents toward HL. IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 21 was used for data analysis. A p-value cut-off point of 0.05 at 95% CI was used to determine statistical significance. The analyses examined the association between socio-demographic characteristics and knowledge and attitudes toward HL using chi-square tests.ResultsOverall, participants included in this study were 243 participants. Of these, 105 (43.2%) were fathers, and 138 (56.8%) were mothers. Ages ranged from 21 to 60+ years. Assessment of the prevalence of various aspects of knowledge and attitudes among parents toward childhood HL revealed that 103 participants (42.4%) possessed good knowledge, while 140 participants (57.6%) possessed poor knowledge. In contrast, the attitude analysis revealed that 224 participants (92.2%) expressed positive attitudes, while only 19 participants (07.8%) showed a negative attitude regarding audiology services. We found a significant association between age group and knowledge (p = 0.002).ConclusionMost parents in our sample possessed poor knowledge regarding childhood HL. However, most parents expressed positive attitudes regarding audiology services. The current findings suggest a need to increase awareness among parents regarding childhood HL.
Highlights
Successful audiology service delivery depends on support from the community, and agreement to utilize hearing healthcare programs
The results revealed that otitis media (OM) was the best known predisposing factor for childhood hearing loss (HL) (94%), followed by noise exposure (87.3%), and family history (72.7%)
Both fathers and mothers exhibited a relatively high level of knowledge relation to the statement “children with HL can attend school”, followed by the statement “babies can be born with HL”
Summary
Successful audiology service delivery depends on support from the community, and agreement to utilize hearing healthcare programs. Assessment of parents’ awareness regarding hearing loss (HL) and audiology services is necessary for the development of suitable hearing programs for children. Audiology services depend on support from the community, and agreement to utilize hearing healthcare programs [1]. The assessment of parents’ awareness regarding hearing loss (HL) and audiology services is essential for developing suitable and comprehensive hearing programs for children [2]. To ensure that children with hearing difficulties reach a normal level of language and speech ability compared with their healthy peers, a program called Universal Newborn Hearing Screening (UNHS) has been implemented in several countries, enabling the diagnosis and management of hearing difficulties in early childhood [7]. There is evidence that these programs can substantially reduce or prevent the impact of sensorineural HL (SNHL) on speech and language learning [10, 11]
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