The Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit

Abstract

Objective: To develop and evaluate a shortened version of the Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit, to be called the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit, or APHAB. Design:The Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit (PHAB) is a 66-item self-assessment, disability-based inventory that can be used to document the outcome of a hearing aid fitting, to compare several fittings, or to evaluate the same fitting over time. Data from 128 completed PHABs were used to select items for the Abbreviated PHAB. AU subjects were elderly hearing-impaired who wore conventional analog hearing aids. Statistics of score distributions and psychometric properties of each of the APHAB subscales were determined. Data from 27 similar subjects were used to examine the test-retest properties of the instrument. Finally, equal-percentile profiles were generated for unaided, aided and benefit scores obtained from successful wearers of linear hearing aids. Results:The APHAB uses a subset of 24 of the 66 items from the PHAB, scored in four 6-item subscales. Three of the subscales, Ease of Communication, Reverberation, and Background Noise address speech understanding in various everyday environments. The fourth subscale, Aversiveness of Sounds, quantifies negative reactions to environmental sounds. The APHAB typically requires 10 minutes or less to complete, and it produces scores for unaided and aided performance as well as hearing aid benefit. Test-retest correlation coefficients were found to be moderate to high and similar to those reported in the literature for other scales of similar content and length. Critical differences for each subscale taken individually were judged to be fairly large, however, smaller differences between two tests from the same individual can be significant if the three speech communication subscales are considered jointly.Conclusions: The APHAB is a potentially valuable clinical instrument. It can be useful for quantifying the disability associated with a hearing loss and the reduction of disability that is achieved with a hearing aid.

Speech processing for the hearing-impaired: successes, failures, and implications for speech mechanisms

“…Subjects had at least two weeks experience with each system in everyday life before evaluation using the ''Abbreviated profile of hearing aid benefit'' (APHAB) (Cox and Alexander, 1995). This test is based on a questionnaire which requires subjects to rate how often they have problems in specific situations, such as ''Unexpected sounds, like a smoke detector or alarm bell are uncomfortable'' or ''When I am having a quiet conversation with a friend, I have difficulty understanding''.…”

Effectiveness of Frequency-Lowering Hearing Aids and Electric Acoustic Stimulation Cochlear Implant for Treating People with a Severe-To-Profound High-Frequency Hearing Loss

“…No sentence or word list was repeated in a same session. The Glasgow Hearing Aid Benefit Profile (GHABP) [20] and the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit (APHAB) [21] were completed after each experimental phase to collect participants' perspectives on the benefits of each technology. Speech recognition data were first analyzed on an individual basis, using a visual analysis method [22,23].…”

“…Performances with FL HAs in activated and deactivated FL conditions were also compared to each other using a similar procedure ( Figure 1, panel C). Data from questionnaires were also analyzed individually, using published within-subject critical differences of the APHAB questionnaire [21] and GHABP's norms [25]. Then, data from all participants were grouped by technology.…”

Amplification and the Geriatric Patient

“…This is obtained through the use of subjective questionnaires that look at handicap, disability, and satisfaction with hearing aids (44). The score tells the audiologist how much benefit the patient perceives from the hearing aids.…”