PREDICTORS OF DAILY ASSESSED HEARING-AID USE AND HEARING CAPABILITY USING VISUAL ANALOG SCALES

Following the fitting of hearing aids, 53 patients rated themselves da ily during one week on visual analogue scales dealing with aspects of the hearing aids (HA) and hearing capability. Before this, the prescri bing audiology assistant categorized the patient into one of four grou ps depending on whether she thought the patient was going to be succes sful or not at home after the fitting. Also compared were the effects of type of audiogram, type of hearing aid and monaural or binaural fit ting on the self-assessed and audiological variables. Finally, a serie s of multiple regressions were performed on the data set. The results showed that the audiology assistant could predict some aspects of HA u sage, but not hearing capability. Patients rated the BTE and the ITC a ids as clearer than the ITE aids, but a wide range of aids were prescr ibed making conclusions difficult. No clear effects were found for typ e of audiogram or type of fitting. Multiple regressions showed that cl earness of sound in the HA was the most important variable in predicti ng the results on hearing capability. The use of repeated daily measur es is recommended in research on the effects of HA fitting.