Cross-cultural adaptation, reliability, and validity of the Chinese version of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-Adult Hearing Loss

Abstract

Objective

Few mental health assessment tools are available for people with hearing loss (HL) in China. The Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-Adult Hearing Loss (AAQ-AHL) has been specifically designed to assess psychological inflexibility in adults with HL and may help assess mental health status promptly for targeted psychological interventions. The study aimed to investigate the cross-cultural validity and reliability of the Chinese version of the AAQ-AHL to assess its applicability to teenagers and adults with HL in China.

Design

A descriptive and correlational study of a convenience sample of students aged above 12 years. All participants were invited to complete an online questionnaire.

Study samples

Participants included 402 students with HL.

Results

The Chinese version of the AAQ-AHL was shown to be an excellent, reliable, and valid instrument that can be used to assess psychological inflexibility in teenagers and adults with HL by clinicians working with Mandarin-speaking populations.

Conclusion

Although the AAQ-AHL showed very good psychometric properties in hearing-impaired students aged above 12 years, further testing is needed to validate the measure across other age groups and validate its feasibility and utility in clinical applications.

Keywords:

• Hearing loss
• questionnaire
• psychological inflexibility
• AAQ-AHL

Ethical approval

The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the institutional review board of Binzhou Medical University (protocol code BMU-IRB-2020-54, approved on 7 April 2020).

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all participants involved in the study.

Consent to publish

All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Author contributions

Conceptualisation, Y.Y., Y.X., and Y.L.; methodology, Y.Y., Y.X., Y.L., L.Z., Y.L., and H.Z.; validation, Y.Y., Y.X., Y.L., L.Z., Y.L., and H.Z.; formal analysis, Y.Y., Y.X., and Y.L.; investigation, Y.Y., L.Z., Y.L., and H.Z.; resources, Y.Y., L.Z., Y.L., and H.Z.; data curation, Y.Y., Y.X., Y.L., L.Z., Y.L., and H.Z.; writing – original draft preparation, Y.Y., Y.X., and Y.L.; writing – review and editing, Y.Y.; visualisation, Y.Y.; supervision, Y.Y.; and project administration, Y.Y.

Acknowledgements

We like to extend our thanks to Philip H.-S. Jen of the University of Missouri-Columbia, Chengyi Qu of Shanxi Medical University, and Xiaohui Song and Yan Wang of Binzhou Medical University for their generous assistance during this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article are available on request from the authors, without undue reservation.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Foundation, Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China [18YJC740128], Postgraduate Education Quality Improvement Plan in Shandong Province, China [SDYAL19164], and the Research Start-up Fund Project of Binzhou Medical University, China [BY2017KYQD05].