The Validity and Reliability of the Speech Prosody Comprehension Test for Children with Normal Hearing and Cochlear Implants

Background and Aim: The comprehension of speech prosody, the nonlinguistic elements of speech that convey emotions, is crucial for social interactions and speech comprehension. This study aimed to investigate the validity and reliability of the Speech Prosody Comprehension Test (SPCT) for Persian-speaking children aged 7–10. Methods: In this study, face validity, construct validity, discriminant validity, test- retest reliability by calculating the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC), and internal consistency using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the SPCT were examined on 32 children aged 7–10 years, including 22 with normal hearing (mean age=8.63±1.04 years) and 10 with unilateral Cochlear Implant (CI) (mean age=9.20±0.78 years) Results: The result demonstrated good face validity (face validity index=88.75). Construct validity was confirmed due to the existence of strong correlations within the subscale items and between the subscale items and the total score. A significant difference in mean scores was found between the normal-hearing and CI groups (p<0.001), indicating discriminant validity. High test-retest reliability was demonstrated for the overall scale (ICC=0.99) and for all subscales (ICC=0.91–0.97). The test also had high internal consistency, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.89 for the overall scale. Conclusion: The SPCT is a valid and reliable clinical tool for assessing speech prosody comprehension in children aged 7–10 with normal hearing and unilateral CI. Further research with larger samples is recommended to confirm the generalizability of the findings to children with other hearing conditions and age groups.