Brainstorming

We identified a wide variety of potentially relevant cognitive processes as the basis for developing an initial database of questions. We also considered the presenting features of disorders that often co-occur with listening difficulties.

Focus Groups

We worked with parents and clinicians to ensure we captured all possible suspected presenting symptoms for children. We also used feedback from parents to further refine the questions and scaling system for the questionnaire.

Piloting

We piloted the questionnaire with 228 parents and obtained test-retest reliabilty and inter-rater reliability to identify the best questions to retain in the final questionnaire.

Standardisation

We have collected responses about listening skills in children aged between 6 and 11 years old from across England.

We are using these data to develop profiles for normal behaviour for each age range.

Validation

We are also now recruiting families of children with a range of language and learning difficulties such as:

• High Functioning Autism (HFA)
• Specific Language Impairment (SLI)
• Dyslexia
• Mild hearing impairment
• Auditory Processing Disorder (APD)
• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

How might a child with listening difficulties compare with a typically developing child?

Here (see right) is a hypothetical set of results for 8 questions on the EPiC-Q. It gives a visual representation of the different response profile of a typically developing child compared with that of a child with listening difficulties.

We will use the validation data to map out listening skills profiles for each of these disorders. We hypothesise that children with different disorders have different strengths and weaknesses. We hope to further understand the relationships between APD and other developmental disorders (see right).