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Language-independent assessment tools evaluate the progress of children who receive a cochlear implant, allowing large pooling of data for better access to insurers and other health care professionals. One hundred and seventeen children from centres in the United Kingdom, Iran and Turkey were assessed on two measures over a five-year test interval. There is a significant improvement over time for the Categories of Auditory Performance (CAP) and Speech Intelligibility Rating (SIR) measures. There was a significant difference between scores for different language groups: accounted for by the differences in age at implantation. There was a significant effect of age at implantation up to three years of device use. There were high correlations between the CAP and SIR scores. A longer duration of deafness resulted in a higher score for both scales; however, there was no relationship when correlated for age. Finally, the CAP pre-operative score allows us to predict the post-operative SIR scores. The scales are validated; reliable measures which can be used across countries and languages. This allows greater ability to pool data allowing data to be generalised across population groups, providing more power to prove that cochlear implantation is a viable treatment for children with bilateral severe-to-profound hearing loss. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]