A qualitative study of strategies for managing a hearing impairment

The aim of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of what hearing-impaired people are doing to deal with demanding auditory situations in everyday life. Twelve middle-aged subjects with clinical hearing impairments were interviewed monthly during 5 months. The interviews focused on the subjects' own descriptions of demanding auditory situations and what they did, thought and felt in these situations. Verbatim transcribed protocols were content-analysed according to Grounded Theory. Fourteen categories were grounded in the data, forming a model for dealing with demanding auditory situations, including two qualitatively different management patterns: 'to control the social scene' and 'to avoid the social scene'. The emerging core variable was socio-psychological: the hearing-impaired individuals strive to maintain the normal identity and to prevent their definition as deviant in interactions with hearing people. The result of the inductive study was verified in a deductive study of 50 hearing-impaired subjects.