Score changes of University Personality Inventory according to academic year progression — Score changes of hearing impaired students after entrance —

We have been systematically conducting a University Personality Inventory (UPI) survey of our students since 1989 in order to assess their mental health status. Informed consent was obtained from all participating subjects. We observed a significant difference in average UPI scores between the hearing impaired and normal and visually impaired students, indicating that the hearing impaired group had a higher degree of mental health. Thus, comparing these three groups with respect to mental health, we found that the hearing impaired group differed significantly from the other two groups, whereas the visually impaired group was similar to the normal control group. However, these results were based on the UPI scores measured at entrance to the college. When we recognize that the UPI score may reflect mental adaptation to a new environment after college entrance, it is important to investigate changes of UPI score with respect to progression of a student from one academic year to the next. In this study, we investigated changes in the UPI score in hearing impaired students with academic year progression