A comparative evaluation of four hearing-aid selection procedures. II--Quality judgements as measures of benefit

Quality judgements by hearing-aid wearers were used to compare hearing-aid frequency responses selected by four different aid selection procedures: the methods of Berger et al. and Byrne and Tonisson, 'intuitive' fitting by an experienced clinician, and a fixed frequency response of + 6 dB/octave. A previous study had demonstrated that the two 'prescription' methods (of Berger et al. and Byrne and Tonisson) showed greater benefit as measured by speech discrimination tests, particularly for patients with sloping audiograms. The results of this study indicated that quality judgements did not appear to be significantly influenced by the fitting procedure used. The only significant factor was the order in which the patients listened to the hearing aids. The second aid was always preferred. This finding was confirmed by a second study in which the only experimental variable was order. Again the second aid was preferred. The implications of this finding for clinical hearing-aid evaluation are discussed.