Do Hearing Aids Address Real-World Hearing Difficulties forAdults With Mild Hearing Impairment? Results From a Pilot Study UsingEcological Momentary Assessment

摘要

Current approaches to the measurement of hearing aid benefit typically use clinical or laboratory-based speech perception tests or retrospective self-report surveys. However, when assessing hearing aid outcomes in adults with mild hearing impairment, the traditional outcome measures may not be sufficiently sensitive. An alternative to these techniques are approaches that capture data about real-world experiences as they are experienced, such as ecological momentary assessment. This single-subject experimental design pilot study investigated the feasibility of using ecological momentary assessment in assessing whether hearing aids make a difference to the real-world listening experiences of adults with mild hearing impairment. Ten participants with an average age of 70 years and no previous amplification experience answered survey questions on their listening experiences over a 4-week period (1 week without hearing aids, 2 weeks with hearing aids, and 1 week without hearing aids). A total of 860 surveys were collected. Participants reported significantly better speech understanding and less listening effort during the 2-week trialwith hearing aids compared to baseline conditions. In addition, theyreported that they were significantly less hampered by their hearingdifficulties and had greater enjoyment of listening events withwearing hearing aids. Individual variation in hearing aid benefit wasevident. This pilot study showed that ecological momentary assessmenthas potential to quantify self-reported aided benefit for individualswith mild hearing impairment fitted with hearing aids. This researchalso highlighted that a real-world approach is needed to exploreindividualized outcomes and provide different insights to standardizedquestionnaires.