Current approaches to the measurement of hearing aid benefit typically
use clinical or laboratory-based speech perception tests or
retrospective self-report surveys. However, when assessing hearing aid
outcomes in adults with mild hearing impairment, the traditional
outcome measures may not be sufficiently sensitive. An alternative to
these techniques are approaches that capture data about real-world
experiences as they are experienced, such as ecological momentary
assessment. This single-subject experimental design pilot study
investigated the feasibility of using ecological momentary assessment
in assessing whether hearing aids make a difference to the real-world
listening experiences of adults with mild hearing impairment. Ten
participants with an average age of 70 years and no previous
amplification experience answered survey questions on their listening
experiences over a 4-week period (1 week without hearing aids, 2 weeks
with hearing aids, and 1 week without hearing aids). A total of 860
surveys were collected. Participants reported significantly better
speech understanding and less listening effort during the 2-week trial
with hearing aids compared to baseline conditions. In addition, they
reported that they were significantly less hampered by their hearing
difficulties and had greater enjoyment of listening events with
wearing hearing aids. Individual variation in hearing aid benefit was
evident. This pilot study showed that ecological momentary assessment
has potential to quantify self-reported aided benefit for individuals
with mild hearing impairment fitted with hearing aids. This research
also highlighted that a real-world approach is needed to explore
individualized outcomes and provide different insights to standardized
questionnaires.