Text

Subjective assessment of listening effort is one way of understanding the auditory processing in complex listening environments. This meta-analysis validated a child-appropriate questionnaire designed to measure listening effort in children aged five to ten and adults. The questionnaire was administered across five listening experiments, with a combined sample of 117 children and 50 adults. For each noise condition, well-being, task performance, and perceived effort were assessed. These items were then combined into one listening effort score. The two noise conditions examined in the meta-analysis were multi-talker babble noise at a signal-to-noise ratio of 0dB compared to silence. Exploratory factor analysis confirmed that all three questionnaire items loaded substantially on a single factor representing listening effort, demonstrating construct validity. Meta-analytic results demonstrated the questionnaire's acceptable to very good internal consistency, with an overall Cronbach‘s alpha of 0.728 and for all children combined, and age-group-specific values ranging from 0.646 to 0.835. The questionnaire successfully differentiated listening effort between silence and noise conditions across all five studies and age groups, with the factor structure remaining invariant across ages, confirming its reliability and suitability for assessing subjective listening effort. These findings provide comprehensive evidence supporting the questionnaire's potential application in both research and clinical contexts.

References