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Expectations about hearing aids and their relationship to fitting outcome
1School of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology, University of Memphis, and Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Tennessee, USA.
Journal of the American Academy of Audiology
|September 8, 2000
Summary
New hearing aid users often have unrealistically high expectations, which may affect their satisfaction. The study developed the Expected Consequences of Hearing aid Ownership (ECHO) questionnaire to measure these expectations.
Area of Science:
- Audiology
- Hearing Healthcare
- Patient Expectations
Background:
- Unrealistic prefitting expectations in new hearing aid users are a concern for clinicians.
- These expectations may negatively impact hearing aid fitting success and patient satisfaction.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of prefitting expectations on hearing aid fitting success.
- To develop and validate the Expected Consequences of Hearing aid Ownership (ECHO) questionnaire.
- To explore the relationship between user expectations and postfitting satisfaction.
Main Methods:
- Development of the Expected Consequences of Hearing aid Ownership (ECHO) questionnaire.
- Four experiments were conducted involving novice hearing aid users.
- Data collection included measuring realistic expectations, evaluating user expectations, assessing reliability, and analyzing relationships with satisfaction.
Main Results:
- Novice hearing aid users demonstrated stable, yet unrealistically high, prefitting expectations.
- Significant variability in expectation patterns was observed among participants.
- Only one subscale of the ECHO questionnaire predicted corresponding satisfaction data.
Conclusions:
- Pre-fitting expectations of hearing aid users are often unrealistically high.
- The ECHO questionnaire can measure these expectations, though its predictive power for satisfaction is limited.
- Understanding and managing patient expectations is crucial for successful hearing aid adoption.