PP417 - Exploring the Relationship Between Hearing Aid Usage Patterns and Self-Reported Benefit: A Field Trial Analysis 

Abstract:
User-driven hearing aid adjustment data from the cloud were examined to determine relationships with a hearing aid benefit survey. While only trends were observed between APHAB and usage pattern, we found significant relationships between hearing aid interactions and APHAB scores in background noise and ease of communication. These findings suggest that objective usage measures may offer insights into self-reported benefits and highlight the potential for integrating usage data to better track user satisfaction.

Summary:
The Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit (APHAB) Questionnaire can play a crucial role in clinicians’ understanding of a patient’s self-reported satisfaction with hearing aids. This tool assesses aspects of hearing aid benefit, including ease of communication, listening in background noise, and overall satisfaction (Cox and Alexander, 1995). In the early weeks of use, patients may not complete surveys to assess their benefit, so alternative tools to guide them through their hearing aid journey could be helpful for clinicians.

How patients interact with and use their hearing aids may correlate with self-reported hearing aid benefit. To evaluate this, twenty-six adults (mean age, 72 years; 8 female) wore hearing aids for a seven-week field trial. Participants’ hearing aid usage and interactivity was captured by Starkey’s proprietary technologies. The usage data includes time spent in conversation, active listening, as well as acoustic environments with speech in noise. Interactivity data includes volume and program adjustments that users initiate through a mobile app, hearing aid buttons, and/or a remote control. The APHAB was completed twice to compute a benefit score; once at the beginning of the field trial regarding their unaided experience, and again at the completion of the study about their experience with the study hearing aids.

Daily averages for conversation time, active listening, speech-in-noise environments, and volume/memory adjustments were calculated for all participants. Correlation analysis was conducted to explore relationships between such objective measures and the users’ APHAB scores. The p-values were adjusted for multiple comparisons using Benjamini-Hochberg procedure. Additionally, the distributions of usage measures were compared between participants in the top and bottom quartiles of self-reported scores. Independent t-tests were performed to assess the significant difference between the two groups daily averages of device usage.

Monotonic relationships between time in conversation, active listening, environments with speech in noise and calculated benefit on the APHAB background noise subscale were observable, though not significantly different (p=0.09) with Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient of 0.33, 0.29, and 0.30, respectively. Users in the top quartile of APHAB background noise scores had a mean daily time spent in conversation of 3.59 hours (SD=1.15), in active listening of 2.26 hours (SD=0.91), and in speech in noise of 3.68 hours (SD=0.77). In contrast, users in the bottom quartile had a mean daily time spent in conversation of 2.75 hours (SD=0.76), in active listening of 2.00 hours (SD=1.19), and in speech in noise of 3.20 hours (SD=1.00). These differences were not statistically significant.

While we observed only trends between APHAB and usage pattern, we found significant monotonic relationships between hearing aid interactions and APHAB background noise and ease of communication subscale. Specifically, the Spearman correlation coefficient between average daily memory changes and reported background noise benefit was 0.43 (p=0.016) while the coefficient for ease of communication benefit was 0.44 (p=0.02).

These findings suggest that objective usage measures may offer insights into self-reported benefit and highlight the potential for integrating usage data to better track user satisfaction.