Mitchell, R.E. & Karchmer, M.A. (2004). Chasing the mythical ten percent: Parental hearing status of deaf and hard of hearing students in the United States. Sign Language Studies, 4(2), 138-163.
Deaf children born to deaf parents are likely to grow up in a social, cultural, and linguistic milieu different from that in which children of hearing parents grow up. The goal of this article was to determine the prevalence of "deaf-of-deaf" children within the overall group of deaf and hard of hearing children and youth. Based largely on the Annual Survey conducted by Gallaudet University, the authors concluded that about 4 percent of deaf children are born to deaf parents, instead of the often-cited ten percent. The Annual Survey collects demographic, program, and service data for each child using voluntary and confidential information provided by schools and programs serving deaf and hard of hearing pre-K through grade 12 and youth in the United States. The authors concluded that estimating the prevalence of deaf-of-deaf students is difficult and parental hearing status information is unavailable for a large number of students.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Mitchell, R. E. & Karchmer, M. A. (2004) parental hearing status for deaf and hard of hearing students
Are the conclusions of this article supported by its data?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
This article concluded that Deaf of Deaf children is not as close to 10% as we have previously thought, and I feel that their data supported this change. However, while this article spent so much time analyzing statistics in different ways, I am still left wondering, "What was the point of it all?" Their results were not too much different than the average of what other studies found, and I can't help but think that it may have been a waste of time and resources. What good comes from finding out the exact percentage of deaf children being born to deaf parents? The article did not mention why its results are applicable and what we can do with their data. I also feel that their way of interpreting data had some minor flaws, such as saying that deaf and hard of hearing can be grouped into the same category. If it is important to find out the true percentage of deaf of deaf children, we should do a new study that specifies the type, degree, and cause of the hearing loss for both parents and children.
This article addressed the question of what is the prevalence of deaf children born to deaf parents in the U.S. and to address whether the often stated 10% was true or not. This study showed that depending how the data is manipulated; the outcome can produce different results. In their study they made a distinction between deaf and hard of hearing, whereas in other studies they were clustered into one category. The authors stated that their level of detail is greater than any other presentation in the literature. They had a few results that I thought were interesting such as – a student who has only one hearing impaired parent, is more likely to have that parent identified as hard of hearing than as deaf. Also, when a parent is identified as hard of hearing, this is an indicator that the child is oriented toward the use of sound and speech. A parent who is identified as deaf is an indication that the child is oriented toward the use of sign language. This article estimated the proportion of deaf children to (one or two) deaf parents is 4.4%. They concluded that Schein’s (1989) 10% was not accurate. This study did not produce results greatly different from those reported in other studies.
I felt like this study almost replicated the data found from many other studies that were quoted. It was interesting the way the data in this study was presented. With any kind of survey study I feel that the researcher can't help but introduce a lot of room for error in that the type of school that is more likely to send back a survey for research purposes narrows the kind of people that are represented. I was also impressed with how one little statistic can be expressed 20 different ways. I felt that in this article, many of the ways the same statistic was expressed was not necessary. They often drove the point home, but at the expense of having a 26 page article. Overall I thought the information was good for funding issues and support of cochlear implantation and, I'm sure, many other reasons, but I wish that the paper used one of the 26 pages to describe the implications of such findings.
One of the major flaws I noticed in this article is the method for collecting data. Data was collected by a school offical and the article stated that Deaf and Hard of Hearing were not defined. If you want to know the hearing status of parents, wouldn't it be better to collect the data from parents? Also, while reading I was continually wondering what the point of the article was. Why did the researchers want to find out the hearing status of parents and what were they planning on doing with that information. With the length of the article you would think more would have been said instead of different ways to get statistical information.
It seems as though the authors where looking for a solid number in relation to the percentage of Deaf of Deaf children that exist in the united states; trying to refute or support other studies. The question I ask myself is to what end? Having a solid demographic number give or take a few percents doesn’t affect the kind of services offered or prevention techniques undertaken. I believe numbers are only helpful if they are key parts in a formula for change.
The authors attempted to examine previous data to determine the parent hearing status of children with hearing loss. What does seem to be clear is that deaf-of-deaf is a relativel low percentage - perhaps as low as 4%. This fact alone -- if substantiated -- is important because most intervention programs are structured to meet the needs of these children who are truly culturally deaf. That is, to pose the question another way, are we adequately serving the other 96% of children who have hearing parents and most likely desire a spoken language approach?
Post a Comment