Italian adaptation of Listening Effort Assessment Scale and Fatigue Assessment Scale questionnaires| ACTA Otorhinolaryngologica Italica

Abstract

Objective

The purpose of this study is to adapt linguistically and culturally both Listening Effort Assessment Scale (EAS) and Fatigue Assessment Scale (FAS) questionnaires into Italian language (EAS-IT and FAS-IT) and to investigate the reliability and validity of these scales in normal hearing and hearing-impaired subjects.

Methods

The Italian adaptation of the EAS and FAS questionnaires was conducted based on back and forward translation methodology.

Both the questionnaires were administered to one hundred and one normal hearing (NH) subjects and eighty-eight hearing impaired subjects (19 hearing aids users_HA; 50 cochlear implant users_CI and 19 affect by single-sided-deafness_SSD).

Results

Both the questionnaires showed a high reliability (Cronbach's α was 0.953 for EAS-IT and 0.837 for FAS-IT). EAS-IT showed high internal consistency with item-rest correlations. The inter-item correlation of the FAS-IT show a difference in the  internal consistency of item 4.

A high significance between the NH group and the three hearing loss groups (HA, CI, SSD) was found for EAS-IT but no significant difference was found  between NH and the single hearing impaired groups for FAS-IT.

Conclusions

EAS-IT showed good internal reliability and validity and is sensitive to the effect of hearing loss.