Parents' perceptions of tele-audiological testing in a rural hearing screening program in South India.
BACKGROUND
Tele-diagnostic audiological testing in a hearing screening program for infants and young children is a novel practice, and this study is the first to explore its application in a rural community. It is important to understand parental perceptions and confidence when introducing a new process such as tele-audiological diagnostic testing in rural areas.


METHODS
A questionnaire with 17 rater-administered items was designed to elicit comments concerning the quality of tele-hearing testing and video-conferencing, access to tele-hearing testing, and parents' attitudes regarding tele-hearing testing in the village. The questionnaire was administered by an audiologist not involved in tele-diagnostic testing to avoid bias.


RESULTS
Parents perceived tele-hearing testing as equal in quality to in-person testing. Technical factors such as good video-conferencing quality and logistical factors such as ease of access due to reasonable travel time to testing facility could have influenced these perceptions.


CONCLUSIONS
While these results show tele-hearing testing is an acceptable alternative, occasional poor signal quality should be addressed prior to large-scale implementation.
Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Sri Ramachandra University, Chennai, India. Electronic address: vidya.ramkumar@gmail.com.
Vidya
V
Ramkumar
Department of Neurosurgery, Sri Ramachandra University, Chennai, India.
K
K
Selvakumar
Department of Audiology & Speech Language Pathology, Bharati Vidyapeeth Deemed University, Pune, India.
C S
CS
Vanaja
Department of Audiology, Nova Southeastern University, Salus University, USA; Department of Communication Pathology, University of Pretoria, South Africa.
James W
JW
Hall
Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Sri Ramachandra University, Chennai, India.
Roopa
R
Nagarajan
Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Sri Ramachandra University, Chennai, India.
J
J
Neethi
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001294:Attitude to Health; D002648:Child; D016057:Evoked Potentials, Auditory, Brain Stem; D005260:Female; D006320:Hearing Tests / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D008297:Male; D010290:Parents; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D019114:Remote Consultation; D012424:Rural Population; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D049269:Videoconferencing; D055815:Young Adult
Access; Community-based hearing screening; Parent perception; Quality; Tele-diagnostic hearing testing; Video-conferencing