Health risk factors of hearing-impaired adolescents

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between selected variables of hearing-impaired adolescents and health risk factors. In order to plan appropriate health education for special populations, it is necessary to know the nature of their health risks.

A computerized health risk inventory was used to measure self-reported attitudes, behaviors and knowledge which have the potential of affecting future health status, and to compute a health risk factor score. School records were used to obtain information regarding degree of hearing loss, percentage of aided speech discrimination, reading achievement level, age of onset of hearing loss, and system of communication used in the educational setting.

Since reading achievement scores for hearing-impaired students are below norms for hearing peers, it was necessary to revise the instrument with carefully controlled syntactic structures and vocabulary. The first pilot study was conducted in sign language which led to slight changes in wording and format of several questions.

The subjects of this study were 69 hearing-impaired students age 13-20 with a hearing loss of at least 50 decibels in the better ear and a reading level of at least 2.0 and enrolled in grades 7-12. When signed parental consent forms had been returned, teachers established an identity code for each student, completed the personal data sheet from school records, and administered the health risk inventory to the students.

Spearman rank-order correlations, the Kruskal-Wallis analysis of variance test, and the Mann Whitney U test were performed to answer the research questions. The findings of this study led to the following conclusions regarding the hearing-impaired adolescents sampled in this investigation.

1. Hearing-impaired students tend to have poor exercise habits, safety practices, and knowledge of the consequences of sexual activity.

2. Students with profound hearing loss are not at greater risk of developing negative health behaviors than students with moderate hearing loss.

3. Students with low speech discrimination percentages are not at greater risk of developing negative health behaviors than students with high speech discrimination.

4. Students with low reading levels are at greater risk of developing negative health behaviors than students with high reading levels.

5. Students in this study with a hearing loss at birth are not at greater risk of developing negative health behaviors than students whose hearing loss occurred later.

6. Hearing-impaired students taught in the total system of communication are not at greater risk of developing negative health behaviors than students in the oral system.