THE ABBREVIATED PROFILE OF HEARING-AID BENEFIT

Objective: To develop and evaluate a shortened version of the Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit, to be called the Abbreviated Profile of Hearin g Aid Benefit, or APHAB. Design: The Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit (P HAB) is a 66-item self-assessment, disability-based inventory that can be used to document the outcome of a hearing aid fitting, to compare several fittings, or to evaluate the same fitting over time. Data from 128 completed PHABs were used to select items for the Abbreviated PHA B. Ah subjects were elderly hearing-impaired who wore conventional ana log hearing aids. Statistics of score distributions and psychometric p roperties of each of the APHAB subscales were determined. Data from 27 similar subjects were used to examine the test-retest properties of t he instrument. Finally, equal-percentile profiles were generated for u naided, aided and benefit scores obtained from successful wearers of l inear hearing aids. Results: The APHAB uses a subset of 24 of the 66 i tems from the PHAB, scored in four 6-item subscales. Three of the subs cales, Ease of Communication, Reverberation, and Background Noise addr ess speech understanding in various everyday environments. The fourth subscale, Aversiveness of Sounds, quantifies negative reactions to env ironmental sounds. The APHAB typically requires 10 minutes or less to complete, and it produces scores for unaided and aided performance as well as hearing aid benefit. Test-retest correlation coefficients were found to be moderate to high and similar to those reported in the lit erature for other scales of similar content and length. Critical diffe rences for each subscale taken individually were judged to be fairly l arge, however, smaller differences between two tests from the same ind ividual can be significant if the three speech communication subscales are considered jointly. Conclusions: The APHAB is a potentially valua ble clinical instrument. It can be useful for quantifying the disabili ty associated with a hearing loss and the reduction of disability that is achieved with a hearing aid.