A new study from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, identifies patient motivation as the second-most important factor in hearing aid adoption.
“Audiological outcomes for adults with mild hearing impairment: A pilot study,” conducted by Rebecca Kelly-Campbell of the University of Canterbury and Karen Thomas and Anna McMillan of Bay Audiology, also in Christchurch, looks into the different “demographic audiometric, and quality-of-life variables” that distinguish between hearing aid adopters and non-adopters. Fifty people were polled as part of the study, 25 of them who had chosen to adopt hearing aids and 25 who had not. All had been diagnosed with a mild hearing impairment.
The study identifies self-perceived hearing ability, self-perceived importance of change, and high-frequency hearing impairment as the most important variables in hearing aid adoption. The study used the Ida Institute’s Line as inspiration for motivational interviewing.
“I have been interested in the [motivational] work by Prochaska and DiClemente since the 1990s,” says Rebecca Kelly-Campbell, a co-author of the study, who answered questions for us via email. “As a clinician, I used the principles of motivational interviewing. When the Ida Institute made its tools (the Line, the Box, the Circle) available, I became interested in ways to validate those tools in a clinical setting.”
Personal perception of hearing loss has long been recognized as a motivator in hearing aid adoption, “stronger even than the pure tone audiometric results,” says Kelly-Campbell. “This finding emphasizes the importance of using tools such as The Line during the needs assessment. When adults with mild hearing impairment recognize they have hearing difficulty and feel that it is important for them to change, they can benefit from using hearing aids.”
All of the participants who adopted hearing aids for the study kept them after the trial period, according to the article. “We were not able to examine continued hearing aid use in this research study,” says Kelly-Campbell. “However, I have conducted other research studies that do examine factors relating to hearing aid and disuse. I think this is a complex issue, with many factors contributing to continued hearing aid use. One interesting finding is the relationship between continued hearing aid use and hearing aid self-efficacy (the confidence in the ability to successfully undertake behaviors to achieve specific goals).”
The study was published in Speech, Language and Hearing. You can download the article here.