Deaf and hard of hearing plus: Preliminary estimates of child and parent functioning.

Purpose/objective: Children who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) with additional special needs ("DHHPlus") have complex differences in psychological development that, when combined with aspects of their environment, often place them at an increased risk for psychological challenges. Further, their combination of special needs places unique demands on their parents. Despite the high proportion of DHH children in this particular subgroup, little research has been done to identify estimates of broad psychological functioning, the parent-child relationship, parent stressors, and parent satisfaction with resources independent of other samples.

Characteristics of Psychologists Assessing Deaf and Hard of Hearing Clients.

Psychological assessment plays a large part in the practice of psychology. Over the years, steps have been taken towards ensuring ethical and culturally sensitive psychological assessment for underserved populations, but little is known about the current state of the field of assessment of deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) individuals. An exploratory survey of school and clinical psychologists who work with DHH clients (n = 30) was conducted to obtain a snapshot of the state of the field.

Review of intellectual assessment measures for children who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Overview: Intellectual assessment of children who are deaf or hard of hearing presents unique challenges to the clinician charged with attempting to obtain an accurate representation of the child's skills. Selection of appropriate intellectual assessment instruments requires a working knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the measure and what changes in standardized administration might be necessary to accommodate for the needs of children who are deaf or hard of hearing. In the case of some available instruments, there is limited guidance and objective research available examining the performance of children who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Development and initial validation of a questionnaire to measure hearing parents' perceptions of health care professionals' advice.

This study reports the development of The Hearing Parents' Perceptions of Health Professionals' Advice Questionnaire (HPP/HPQ). This questionnaire was designed to investigate the impact of the advice and information that parents receive from health professionals during the time when their child's hearing loss is identified and how parents, in turn, make initial decisions about services and interventions for their deaf child. Once developed, the HPP/HPQ was partially validated on 2 separate samples.