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Reliability of patient choice between hearing aid systems
L G McClymont1, G G Browning, S Gatehouse
1Department of Otolaryngology, Royal Infirmary, Glasgow, Scotland, UK.
British Journal of Audiology
|February 1, 1991
Summary
Patient self-reports on hearing aid differences can be unreliable. Approximately 20% of perceived hearing aid differences are false positives, impacting patient choice assessments.
Area of Science:
- Audiology
- Hearing Healthcare
Background:
- Assessing patient benefit from hearing aids in daily life is crucial.
- Patient self-reports are essential for evaluating real-world hearing aid performance.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine the false positive report rate of perceived differences between hearing aids.
- To assess the reproducibility of patient choices when comparing hearing aid systems.
Main Methods:
- Two patient groups were studied: one comparing identical aids, the other comparing different aids.
- Patients reported perceived differences and preferences between hearing aid systems over multiple sessions.
Main Results:
- When comparing identical aids, 36% reported no difference, 45% a slight difference, and 18% a moderate/large difference.
- When comparing different aids, 65% chose the same aid twice, but 32% of these reported a moderate/large difference on both occasions.
- Discounting minor differences, the false positive rate for reporting a significant difference was approximately 20%.
Conclusions:
- Patient reports of hearing aid differences have a significant false positive rate, around 20%.
- Factors like chance, order effects, and choice reproducibility must be controlled when evaluating patient preferences for hearing aids, especially within National Health Service (NHS) systems.