An Investigation of balance levels in children with hearing-impaired

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate of balance skills level of deaf children. Children with hearing impaired from The Kutahya Primary School for Hearing-Impaired, were randomly selected first week of May 2013 during the week days. A total of 45 children (29 boys and 16 girls) with hearing impairments, age from 7 to 16 years, were participated in this study. BOT-2, balance subset with 9 parts was used for evaluation of balance skills. As a statistical method at the level of α=0.05 meaningfulness, t-test were performed in SPSS software package. Results show that age, height, and weight differences between girls and boys were found insignificant. Significance tests were observed between walking forward on a line, standing with feet apart on a line-eyes closed, walking forward heel-to-toe on a line, and standing on one leg on a line-eyes closed (P<0.05). Although there were found differences between girls and boys following balance tests, but all those were not found significance. Children with hearing impairments showed significantly lower balance abilities in girls than boys.