Parental awareness and the detection of hearing loss.

The aim of this study was to assess the effect of a specific educative process on the accuracy of parental observation regarding the child's hearing status. The presence or absence of parental concern in two groups of subjects, one of which had undergone the educative process, was elicited by direct questioning and its accuracy checked by formal hearing assessment. The results indicate that there is no significant difference in the reliability of parental observation between the two groups. However, both groups were selected from the same high awareness district and one could postulate that the effect of the educative process was minimized because the 'uneducated' group, as discussed, was in fact not totally uneducated. This is supported by the high accuracy of parental suspicion in hearing impaired children in this latter group compared to that reported in other studies. These results support the use of parental observation as part of a screening programme for the detection of hearing impairment in childhood.