The Chinese version of the Parents’ Evaluation of Aural/Oral Performance of Children (PEACH) rating scale for infants and children with normal hearing

Objective This study aimed to establish Chinese norms for the Chinese version of the Parent’s Evaluation of Aural/Oral of Children (PEACH) rating scale.Design and study sample: The PEACH scores were collected from 198 parents whose children have normal hearing. The test-retest reliability of the PEACH scale was evaluated in a subgroup of 34 parents. Another 27 parents also filled out a Putonghua Communicative Development Inventory which was used to explore the relationship between the PEACH ratings and language scores.Results The normative curve was established using a logit regression function. The total scores increase rapidly with increasing age. A plateau starts from 22 months with the PEACH score reaching 90% and achieves the maximum score of 95% by 47 months of age. The test-retest analyses showed high reliability for all subscales, with all the correlation coefficients values exceeding 0.9 (p < 0.01). The 90% and 95% confidence intervals were provided to facilitate evaluation of differences between scores obtained under different conditions. A significant correlation was found between the PEACH total score and language performance (p < 0.05).Conclusions Normative data from the Chinese population was provided to enable performance of an individual child to be related to their normally hearing peers.