Audiologic and nonaudiologic correlates of hearing handicap in black elderly

The purpose of this study was to explore the contributions of audiologic and nonaudiologic factors, including medical, social, economic, and psychological, towards understanding hearing handicap in black elderly. One hundred hearing-impaired black elderly subjects from Harlem Hospital were given audiologic evaluations, including speech recognition tests under varied conditions. Audiologic factors were significantly related to hearing handicap, measured by the Hearing Handicap Scale (HHS) and the Hearing Handicap Inventory for the Elderly (HHIE), with stronger correlations for speech recognition measured at 50 dB HL in a sound field than at 40 dB SL under earphones. Once hearing loss was taken into consideration, nonaudiologic factors (measured on the Multidimensional Functional Assessment Questionnaire), particularly the dependability dimension of social support and the lethargy and paranoid dimensions of mental health, emerged as contributing predictor variables for HHS and HHIE scores. These findings suggest that a multidimensional approach is key to understanding and remediating hearing handicap in black elderly.