Christine Yoshinaga-Itano, PhD, University of Colorado-Boulder (Funded 2015-2017)
This project will analyze over 5000 assessments collected on over 2000 children with permanent hearing loss, before and after the establishment of universal newborn hearing screening. The majority of files have data on: age of identification of the hearing loss, age of intervention start, age of amplification, degree of hearing loss, maternal level of education, gender, ethnicity/race, number of minutes of intervention per week, cognitive status, self-help, situation comprehension, expressive language, comprehension-conceptual, social and general development, expressive vocabulary, development of gestures, words understood and phrases understood up to 16 months, spontaneous speech/language sample, number of true consonants, number of true vowels, speech intelligibility, total number of utterances/words, mean length of utterance, and total different words. These variables would be available for the total database. Approximately 250 children have data until 5 years of age and 150 children have data until 7 years of age (Goldman Fristoe Test of Articulation, Test of Expressive Vocabulary, Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language, language sample data). Significant data is available for the amount of parent-talk and number of words. Data on the cost of screening, the cost of diagnostic evaluation, and the cost of early intervention services can be obtained, as well as changes over time. Significant progress has been made to obtain the Colorado State Assessment Program school testing of these children. Educational data from 3rd through 10th grade is available and we will obtain this data. Data can be analyzed for children with bilateral permanent hearing loss, unilateral hearing loss, auditory neuropathy, children with additional disabilities and children with normal cognitive ability, children in English speaking homes, and children in Spanish speaking homes. The data set is sufficient enough to examine mediating and moderating variables as well as growth curves and other predictor models.