Development of Hearing Aid Benefit Questionnaire for Adults

Abstract

The objective of the present study was to develop a questionnaire for evaluating hearing aid benefit in adults and also to compare the benefit perceived by family members and hearing aid users. Thirty adults diagnosed as having mild to moderately severe sensori-neural hearing loss in the age range of 18 to 50 years participated in the study. All the subjects were fitted with monaural hearing aid with the speech identification scores greater than 60%. Totally 84 questions were chosen under eight subscales in terms of communication in favorable condition, communication in unfavorable condition, listening over telephone, listening to music, annoyance, social and emotional behavior, care, usage and knowledge about hearing aids and perceived benefits by family members of the hearing aid users. Results showed that there was a significant difference between unaided and aided conditions in both analog and digital hearing aid users. But the findings were not significant in terms of perceived benefit between analog and digital hearing aid users. The study showed that there is no significant difference between the benefit perceived by hearing aid users and their family members. The study also revealed that hearing aid benefit questionnaire is an efficient tool in quantifying hearing aid benefit in adults.