Preferred Name
Aubreigh Cartwright
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Date of Graduation
5-14-2026
Semester of Graduation
Spring
Degree Name
Doctor of Audiology (AuD)
Department
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
First Advisor
Rory DePaolis
Abstract
Chronic otitis media (COM) is a condition associated with hearing fluctuations, recurrent medical interventions, and speech-language concerns. While the audiological impacts for children are well documented, there is less research pertaining to parents’ and caregivers’ experiences. The goal of the overall line of inquiry was to examine the impact of chronic otitis media on parent and caregiver quality of life. Parents and caregivers of ten typically developing infants from six to twelve months of age without COM were administered parent-proxy instruments to determine quality of life, as well as expressive and receptive lexicon. The parents were administered a family intake form, the Pediatric Quality of Life Family Impact Module (PedsQL FIM), and the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories: Words and Gestures (MB-CDI). Comparison of means results indicated a consistency between means for non-COM cases across the two datasets when compared to quality of life and receptive lexicon scores from literature. Results when comparing quality of life (QOL) to receptive lexicon scores indicated that families with lower QOL have infants with a higher receptive vocabulary. The relationship between QOL and receptive lexicon scores was puzzling. No other studies have looked at this connection. At this point, this pattern should be interpreted cautiously due to the small number of data points and large spread. Incorporating caregiver support and counseling into audiologic management may improve overall treatment outcomes and family well- being.
