CATEGORIES OF AUDITORY PERFORMANCE - INTER-USER RELIABILITY

Categories of Auditory Performance (CAP) describes a scale used to rat e outcomes from paediatric cochlear implantation in everyday life. It differs from more technical measures by being readily applied and easi ly understood by non-specialist professionals and by parents. Being ba sed on subjective assessments, there is a need to establish whether ra tings by different persons are comparable. Therefore, an analysis of i nter-user reliability was undertaken using ratings from 23 children fo llowed up at various intervals after implantation. Analysis relating s cores by local teachers of the deaf and the teachers of the deaf at th e implant centre revealed very high inter-user reliability (correlatio n coefficient 0.97). This result establishes the reliability of CAP as an outcome measure for use in cochlear implant programmes.