LAUSR

The Infant-Toddler Meaningful Auditory Integration Scales (IT-MAIS; Zimmerman-Phillips, S., Osberger, M.J., Robbins, A.M. 2001. Infant-toddler meaningful auditory integration scale. Sylmar, CA: Advanced Bionics Corporation) is a popular assessment designed to measure listening skills in children with hearing loss aged 0–3 years. For this study we analyzed the item-level psychometric properties of the IT-MAIS via Rasch analysis to gain further understanding about its validity and reliability. We chose to analyze the psychometric properties of the IT-MAIS because very little information exists regarding its development and validation, although it is widely used to assess listening skills in children with sensorineural hearing loss ages 0–3 years pre- and post-cochlear implant (CI). Our results indicated that the IT-MAIS items demonstrated less than ideal psychometric properties and the IT-MAIS item order did not reflect the order in which children are expected to develop functional listening skills. Our findings suggest that there is a pressing need for further discussion among researchers and clinicians about (1) how the IT-MAIS is used, and (2) what other valid and reliable outcome measures could be used alongside, or in place of, the IT-MAIS to determine CI candidacy, establish treatment goals, or track progress in listening development in very young children with hearing loss.