Leveraging Online Communities to Understand Patient Experiences With Hearing Aids and Cochlear Implants: A Scoping...

Hearing loss impacts 430 million individuals worldwide and is linked to negative outcomes such as social isolation and cognitive decline. While social media offers a valuable avenue for gathering insights into patient experiences with hearing aids (HAs) and cochlear implants (CIs), there remains a significant gap in understanding how to effectively capture and analyze these perspectives. This scoping review aims to map existing literature about online communities, providing a novel approach to exploring and analyzing patient experiences with HAs and CIs that conventional research methods may overlook.

A comprehensive literature search was conducted across several databases to identify studies evaluating HA and CI user experiences with regard to online platforms. Studies were screened and summarized, drawing out themes for user devices studied, digital platforms utilized, and primary analysis methods.

Of 1,752 original studies screened, 16 were ultimately included. Three primary modes of analysis emerged from a review of the literature: (a) manual coding of text, (b) computational text analysis, and (c) audiovisual content analysis. Each approach contributed distinct insights: Manual coding captured nuanced lived experiences and emotional narratives, computational techniques offered scalable assessments of sentiment and usage patterns, and audiovisual analyses highlighted educational quality and content dissemination trends. Findings revealed underlying trends in the utility of online communities as a space for patients with a CI or HA to share personal anecdotes and experiences, as a modality to distribute medical information and decrease barriers to health literacy, and as a unique environment to find peer support.

This scoping review demonstrates promise in the use of online platforms as a resource for evaluating HA and CI user experiences. Evaluating these digital platforms can help inform patients and guide providers with user perspectives, offer support systems for patients, and empower patients with a CI or HA to optimize their medical, communicative, and social engagement throughout their hearing health care journey.

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.31060957.