DISPOSITIONAL OPTIMISM, DYSPHORIA, HEALTH, AND COPING WITH HEARING IMPAIRMENT IN ELDERLY ADULTS

Sixty-eight elderly hearing impaired subjects were interviewed and com pleted self-report measures on hearing disability, dispositional optim ism, dysphoria, and general health. The measures used were the Hearing Coping Assessment (HCA), the Hearing Questions (HQ), the Life Orienta tion Test (LOT), The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and a subscale f rom the Goteborg Quality of Life (GQL). Psychometric analyses of HCA, HQ, LOT, BDI, and GQL revealed high reliability in terms of Cronbach's Alpha and split-half r's. Significant intercorrelations were found be tween several measures, but not with pure-tone audiometry(0.5, 1, 2, a nd 3 kHz). Cluster analysis was used to identify subgroups in the samp le. As a result three clusters were identified interpreted as 'high co pers', 'copers with moderate psychological and somatic complaints', an d 'low copers'. Results from the cluster analyses were confirmed by us ing two different clustering methods and by between-cluster comparison s on the HQ, which had not been used to obtain the clusters.