A Simplified Approach to Quantifying a Child's Bilingual Language Experience

There is an increasing need to accurately and efficiently describe a bilingual child's dynamic linguistic experience during audiological evaluations. This report documents an approach at qualitatively capturing linguistic exposure and usage information in a time-efficient manner. A well-known pediatric bilingual survey was administered to 83 parents of bilingual children, obtaining information on the child's exposure (input) to and usage (output) of Spanish and English on an hourly basis (17 time frames) during a typical weekday and weekend. Parents also completed a questionnaire that obtains demographic information of the child and family, parent-rated language proficiency of the child, and a family language history profile. A factor analysis, utilizing three time intervals, indicated that condensing the full-length survey's 17 time frames to three time frames accounts for > 74% of the variation in language exposure and usage information. Data suggest that there is potential to condense the full-day diary approach (17 time frames) to a more time efficient method of collecting data from only three time intervals while capturing similar valuable linguistic information providing information to the audiology clinician about the dynamic pediatric bilingual linguistic experience. Next steps will require data collection for the full-length hour-by-hour survey and for the condensed time intervals within the same cohort of children. These data are necessary to confirm a strong correlation between the language exposure and usage information of the two approaches.