Ms Carolyn Mee1, Harvey Dillon2,3, Maxime Li-Kim-Mui2
1Sound Scouts,, Crows Nest, Australia, 2Macquarie University, , Australia, 3University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
Biography:
Carolyn Mee
Sound Scouts CEO & FOUNDER
In 2011 Carolyn Mee set her sights on improving children’s hearing screening. Collaborating with the National Acoustic Laboratories Sound Scouts was created.
In 2015 Sound Scouts was awarded a NSW Medical Devices Fund Grant ensuring its continued development and commercialisation. Sound Scouts has since enabled over 190,000 hearing checks in metropolitan, rural and importantly remote areas where audiology services are not always readily available.
Mee has received numerous awards for her innovative achievements including winning the 2020 Women in Digital, Innovator of the Year Award and the 2019 Digital Health Award at the Impact Pediatric Health Competition in Austin, Texas. Awards are great but improving lives is the real prize!
Abstract
Background: Mandarin-speaking children in Australia have a significant gap in accessing hearing screening tools. Without sufficient English proficiency, these children could miss crucial hearing screenings, the widespread application of which is facilitated by the use of language-based, rather than just tonal-based, screening tools. This project aimed to validate a Mandarin version of Sound Scouts (a game-based hearing screening app that offers the benefit of assessing listening difficulties in noise) to extend access to hearing screening for Mandarin-speaking children in Australia and internationally.
Method: The research activity involved identifying linguistically suitable Mandarin words and phrases for the test activities, translation, recording and incorporating the content into the app. The Mandarin version was tested on 60 children (ages 5 -12) and 20 young adults. Testing took place at three schools representing a diversity of school types (international government, private).
Results: Data analysis showed mean z-scores for speech in noise for adults at -0.87 and for children at -0.26, indicating acceptable performance when compared to established international norms based on three English and a Spanish version of
Sound Scouts. Tone-in-noise scores were well-distributed around zero for both groups, as expected. Comparisons were made with 1000 Australian cases and highlighted the need to add an estimated 0.55 to the speech-in-noise z-scores for interim use.
Discussion: Validation suggest that the Mandarin language version provides an effective hearing screening tool for Mandarin speaking children. The inclusion of language-specific versions like Mandarin and Modern Arabic is key to improving accessibility and promoting equity in global hearing health.