Translation and Validation of the Noise Exposure Questionnaire in Kannada

Phase 1: Johnson et al. established the first NEQ in 2017 to calculate each person’s yearly noise exposure, which includes workplace and daily exposures. The translation procedure will be carried out by utilizing the International Test Committee 2013 guidelines with the informed consent of Dr. Johnson’s team. Step 1: Forward and Backward translation. Two bilingual translators independently translate the original English questionnaire into Kannada. Then bilingual expert team compares the two versions of the translation, and a preliminary version of the K-NEQ is obtained. The preliminary version of the K-NEQ is to be translated back into English by two independent English majors. Back translation with the original NEQ is done to ensure its meanings are consistent. Step 2: Content Validation. This step involves 3 audiologists and 2 linguits to rate the content of the questionnaire in 5 point rating scale (1- completely irrelevant; 5- completely relevant). Open response regarding any other suggestions for every question is allowed. Phase 2: Involves Pilot study with 30 Kannada speaking adults between 18-30 years of age. Final score less than 79 is considered as a valid questionnaire. 20%of the population will be retested after two weeks to check for the test retest reliability.Phase 3: Hearing screening and administration of the questionnaire. Approval from the manufacturing industry will be obtained to proceed with the study. Employees are recruited from Varun piping System Manipal, AC plant KMC Manipal, Karnataka closures private limited, Udaya kitchen crafts Manipal. Obtaining appropriate consent from the participants chosen for the study to proceed with hearing screening which is followed by Otoscopic examination. Hearing screening of all the subjects will be conducted prior to questionnaire using portable audiometer. Pure tone average will be obtained for air conduction thresholds at 500, 1k, 2k and 4k frequencies respectively by adapting Hughson Westlake method using a calibrated audiometer and headphones. Each participant will be asked to complete the self reported NEQ that requires approximately ten minutes to respond to the questions. Participants are instructed to recollect instances of participating in noisy activities over the course of a year. Average is calculated by adding individual responses to each question and obtaining the number of hours spent on each noisy activity. Overall annual noise exposure levels are estimated by combining Episodic and Routine exposures. Those with annual noise exposure level values of more than 79 are considered to be at risk for NIHL using the NIOSH occupational noise limit of 85 dB exposure level with a 3 dB exchange rate.