Validity and Reliability of the IT-MAIS Korean Version in Children with Normal Hearing

Background & Objectives: With the expansion of early diagnosis for intervention against hearing loss, evaluating the hearing perception of infants and toddlers is becoming more important. However, to evaluate hearing perception of infants and toddlers, specialized tests are needed because of the developmental characteristics of the subjects. IT-MAIS is a test that evaluates meaningful auditory integration ability in infants and toddlers. The purpose of the present study was to verify the validity and reliability of the Korean version of the IT-MAIS (IT-MAIS-K). Method: The participants for validity were five SLPs. The participants for reliability were 80 children from 0 to 24 months of age. The subjects passed a newborn hearing screening test and did not have any disabilities. The IT-MAIS-K was performed through an interview with the parents of these children. Content validity, tests of the reliability of the IT-MAIS-K, and regression analysis of the IT-MAIS-K results regarding development were performed. Results: The participants verified the content validity of the IT-MAIS-K. The internal consistency reliability of the IT-MAIS-K was high (Chronbach's a= 0.92), along with high corrected itemtotal correlation coefficients (r= 0.69 to 0.89). Age in months was shown to be a significant variable in change of hearing perception ability (R= 0.96). Discussion & Conclusion: The IT-MAIS-K can be considered as a reliable hearing perception test for infants and toddlers. The results of the present study show the test can be used to effectively assess the development of hearing perception ability in children with hearing loss.