Developing of Persian version of the BKB sentences and content validity assessment

Background and Aim: With regard to the shortage of proper materials in Persian for the evaluation of speech perception in children, this study aimed to develop the Persian version of the BKB sentence test, and determine its content validity in normal Persian speaking children aged 6-12 years. Methods: This study was an applied research. The study procedure comprised sentence construction, determining their content validity, and degree of difficulty when presenting to 15 normal children with noise background. The selected sentences were short with high redundancy, a simple structure, and containing words appropriate to vocabulary of grade one and two children. Content validity of the sentences was determined by Lawshe method through presenting them to 10 experts. Sentences were presented in different signal to noise ratios (SNRs) to 15 children aged 6-12 years. The average SNR for each sentence was determined. The upper and lower limit to select the final sentences were determined by calculating the average and standard deviation of SNR to perceive the sentences. Results: According to experts’ opinions, out of 220 selected sentences, 200 sentences obtained acceptable level of content validity (CVR˃0.62). In addition, analyzing the data from the average SNR for sentence perception revealed that 43 sentences were harder or easier than the acceptable range that were removed from the sentence package. The remaining 157 sentences were categorized into 10 equivalent lists. Conclusion: The findings indicate that the Persian version of the BKB sentence test has good content validity and is applicable in research and clinical studies.