The Speech, Spatial and Qualities of Hearing Scale (SSQ) is a scale widely used in the international field of audiology to assess the listening abilities of listeners in different domains. In this study, the original English version of the 49-item SSQ and the short version of the 12-item SSQ were translated and adapted into Mandarin Chinese versions of the SSQ-TW and SSQ12-TW for Taiwanese adults, and reliability and validity analyses were completed.
This study recruited adults aged 18 to 50 through the Internet. Respondents were divided into normal-hearing group and hearing-impaired group, with 103 people in each group. A total of 206 data was collected. Reliability and validity tests included internal consistency, retest reliability, content validity, construct validity, the validity of correlations, and discriminative power. Finally, the best cut-off point was calculated to differentiate the response results of the two groups.
The results showed that the Taiwan version of the SSQ-TW and the short version of the SSQ12-TW had good reliability and discriminative power. SSQ-TW and SSQ12-TW presented high internal consistency (Cronbach’s α =0.99 and 0.96) and test-retest reliability [r=0.83-0.88 (p<0.001) and r=0.71-0.84 (p<0.001)] which were similar to the results of different language versions. Content validity was assessed twice by five experts, and content validity values were greater than 0.8 for both assessments. Construct validity was analyzed and factor loadings were greater than 0.5 for both scales, indicating that the extracted common factors were effective in responding to the indicator variables. To assess the criterion-related validity, the SSQ-TW and the SSQ12-TW were compared with Hearing Handicap Inventory for Adults (HHIA), and results showed moderate to high correlations. For discriminant power, the mean scores of SSQ-TW and SSQ12-TW were significantly different and the effect size was large between normal-hearing group and hearing-impaired group. The best cut-off score was 7.9 for the SSQ-TW and 7.8 for the SSQ12-TW based on the ROC curve analysis, and can be used as a reference cut-off point for screening adults with hearing loss in the future.
The results showed that the SSQ-TW and SSQ12-TW have good reliability and validity, and can be used as reference tools for adult hearing screening, assessment of hearing ability, evaluation of hearing aid benefit, and development of an auditory rehabilitation program.