Performance inventory for profound and severe loss (PIPSL).

This study was undertaken to develop a quantifiable and reliable self-rating inventory specifically for persons with profound and severe hearing losses. Fifty such subjects with such losses who wore hearing aids rated themselves on a scale of 0-6 (never to always) on 125 items that sampled their performance in a variety of communicative situations. Items were assigned to tentative categories that were then refined so as to achieve high internal consistency, reflected by high alpha coefficients, with a minimal number of items. Six final categories, or scales, containing a total of 58 items, emerged with alpha coefficients .86 or higher. The scales were labeled Understanding Speech With Visual Cues, Intensity, Response to Auditory Failure, Environmental Sounds, Understanding Speech With No Visual Cues, and Personal. Another 16 items that failed to fit into any scale, and did not form a scale of their own, were also included in the final inventory because they related to individual rehabilitative concerns and activities in ways not represented among the items of the six scales.