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: AAQ-AHL; Hearing loss; psychological inflexibility; questionnaire.