Translating research into practice
JCPSLP
Volume 16, Number 1 2014
19
KEYWORDS
DEAF
HEARING LOSS
MULTILINGUAL
ORAL
SIGN
Communication choices:
Translating research to practice for professionals working
with children with hearing loss
Kathryn Crowe and Sharynne McLeod
an understanding ensures professionals, organisations,
and researchers can best support parents as they make
decisions about communication mode and use.
To date, there has never been an investigation of the
communication modes and spoken languages used by a
representative group of Australian children with hearing loss
and their parents. A series of four studies were undertaken
as part of a PhD titled
Multilingual children with hearing
loss: Communication and choices
(Crowe, 2013; Crowe,
Fordham, McLeod, & Ching, Crowe, McKinnon, McLeod,
& Ching, 2013; Crowe, McLeod, & Ching, 2012; Crowe,
McLeod, McKinnon, & Ching, 2012). Research findings
from these studies are translated in the current paper
for Australian professionals working with children with
hearing loss and their families. This information adds to
professional knowledge to help clinicians and educators
better understand the choices that parents make about
how their children with hearing loss will communicate.
Previous studies of parent decision-making have looked
at small groups of children and parents who have similar
demographic characteristics. Children and families
participating in the current studies were drawn from a
population study of Australian children and have a very
broad range of audiological, cultural, linguistic, social,
cognitive, educational, and behavioural characteristics.
This research is also unique because it asked parents
how they and their children communicated, looked at how
children communicated at home and in early intervention,
and it investigated how children communicated before they
began formal schooling. These diverse characteristics, and
the large number of families participating in these studies,
mean that this research about parents’ decision-making
represents many different perspectives.
Two questions were examined in order to better
understand the communication usage of young Australian
children with hearing loss. First, how do children with
hearing loss and their parents communicate? That is, which
communication modes (speech and/or sign) and languages
(language choice and spoken language multilingualism) are
used? Second, what are the most important factors that
influence parents’ decisions about how their children with
hearing loss will communicate?
The Longitudinal Outcomes of
Children with Hearing Impairment
(LOCHI) study
Findings outlined in the current paper are primarily based
on data from the Longitudinal Outcomes of Children with
When children are diagnosed with hearing
loss, their families begin making many
decisions, including whether their children
will use speech or sign, and if they are
multilingual, what languages they will use
with their children. Parents frequently consult
with health and education professionals
concerning the best communication pathway
for their children and their families. This
paper is a translational summary of four
studies investigating the communication
choices of children (n = 406) with hearing loss
and their parents (n = 792) who were
participating in the Longitudinal Outcomes of
Children with Hearing Impairment (LOCHI)
study in Australia. Parents reported on the
factors that were influential in their decision-
making about whether their children with
hearing loss would communicate using
speech, sign, and/or more than one spoken
language. The influences parents reported
included advice from professionals, children’s
access to speech through audition, children’s
intervention experiences, children’s future
opportunities, practicalities of
communication, and creating a sense of
belonging for their children.
A
s with all areas of speech pathology, professionals
strive to follow evidence-based practice principles
when they are working with children with hearing
loss and their families. That means that professionals
integrate information from research studies with their own
knowledge and experience, and input from the children and
families with whom they work, to provide the best possible
services with the best possible outcomes for children and
families (Sackett, Rosenberg, Gray, Haynes, & Richardson,
1996). Understanding how children with hearing loss
and their parents communicate, and how parents make
decisions about modes of communication, is important
for the delivery of evidence-based practice when working
with children with hearing loss and their families. Such
Kathryn
Crowe (top)
and Sharynne
McLeod
