A Study on Agility of School Children in India with Different Degree of Hearing Loss

Abstract

Physical/motor fitness level of the hearing-impaired population have already attempted in previous studies where degree of hearing-loss of the subjects were not considered so far. Therefore, the aim of the study was to compare agility among children with different degree hearing-loss in India. Total of two-hundred-fifty-two (N=252, Boy=126 & Girls=126) hearing-impaired children (aged 13-20 years) were selected as subjects. Degree of Hearing-loss was measured by audiometric technique and divided into six different groups’ viz. Profound, Severe, Moderately-Severe, Moderate, Mild and Normal with twenty one subjects in each group for each sex. Agility was measured through 4×10 meter shuttle run test. 2-way-ANOVA followed by Tukey's test was used as necessary statistics. The significance was tested at p <.05 level. In agility, boys ware significantly better than the girls in all respect, when different hearing impaired groups were combined. Significant differences in agility among the different hearing impaired groups were observed except in few cases when both sexes were combined. No significant interaction between Sex and degree of hearing loss were observed. An increasing linear trend in agility was observed with decreasing degree of hearing Loss. Thus, an inverse relationship between agility and degree of hearing loss (dB HL) is observed.