Objective Parents' satisfaction with the services for children with hearing loss is one of the most important indicators in evaluating the effectiveness of therapeutic and rehabilitation programs for such children. Accordingly, in the present study, the validity and reliability of the questionnaire for parents' satisfaction with the services provided for hearing-impaired children under the age of 6 years are examined .
Materials & Methods In this descriptive and analytical research work, the questionnaire under study was completed by 60 randomly selected parents in Tehran who had used the training and rehabilitation services of these centers for at least one year. Fifteen of these parents were re-tested to assess reliability. The questionnaire was composed of 5 subtests of satisfaction of structural facilities (7 questions), satisfaction of sanitation conditions (10 questions), satisfaction of services and performance of the center (18 questions), satisfaction of the communication and the behavior of the staffs (12 questions), and satisfaction of fees against the services (3 questions). Internal consistency in level item and scale, items correlation with the total scale, test-retest repeatability, face validity, and content validity were also evaluated. Finally, the available data were analyzed by using SPSS (version 17) software. The other statistical methods included the Cronbach's alpha coefficients, Spearman correlation, and the tests of Kolmogorov-Smirnov Friedman, Kruskal-Wallis, and U-Mann Whitney.
Results In relation to psychometric properties, 0.79 validity of the questionnaire and 90% reliability of internal consistency were obtained. Adequate correlations with the total scale were found for each item. In addition, the test-retest reliability was 75%. Most of the parents were found to be satisfied or pretty satisfied with most of the service areas of the centers, including overall satisfaction (69.5%), structural and environmental facilities (80.66%), sanitation conditions (75%), services and the performance of the center (91.66%), communication and stuff attitude (91.66%), and cost (55.5%). Among the items of the questionnaire, the greatest satisfaction was related to communication and staff attitude (SD=0.31, M=4.72), and the lowest satisfaction was with the fees of the service center (SD=0.62, M=3.27). The result of Spearman correlation between specific dimensions and overall satisfaction showed significantly positive correlation (P<0.01), which confirmed the validity of the questionnaire's structure. The satisfaction of services received, age, education, number of family members with disabilities, time to clinic and hearing parents were not significantly correlated.
Conclusion The results of this study suggest that the questionnaire has good validity and reliability. In addition, it seems that the parents' satisfaction is high with respect to the services of the centers.