Investigating themes in hearing quality of life with user-nominated goals on the Glasgow Hearing Aid Benefit Profile (GHABP)

TL;DR

This study explores user-defined hearing goals to identify themes not covered by standard assessments, aiming to improve hearing quality of life evaluations in clinical trials.

Contribution

The study identifies new themes in user-nominated hearing goals that could enhance the patient-centeredness of hearing aid benefit assessments.

Findings

Common themes included group conversations, background noise, and listening without visual cues.

Themes like background noise and non-visual listening were highly relevant to individuals with hearing loss.

Incorporating these themes into assessments may improve clinical trial outcomes and patient care.

Abstract

The Glasgow Hearing Aid Benefit Profile (GHABP) is a patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) that was developed for the assessment of hearing aid efficacy using standard goals and user-nominated goals. The objective of this study was to describe user-nominated hearing goals to determine themes that are not currently being captured by the standard goals and that could improve comprehensive assessment of hearing quality of life with the GHABP for use in clinical trials.

We conducted a secondary analysis of a clinical trial at two tertiary care institutions. Adults ≥ 50 years of age with hearing loss completed the GHABP before treatment, including the portion where they provided up to two user-nominated goals for situations where hearing was personally challenging to them. We then categorized these goals into themes.

A total of 262 participants completed the standard GHABP and provided a total of 501 user-nominated goals. Common themes were having a conversation with several people in a group (80/501, 16.0%), hearing in background noise (73/501, 14.6%), and listening when unable to see the speaker’s mouth (57/501, 11.4%).

Themes of listening in background noise and listening when unable to see the speaker’s mouth are very important to many individuals with hearing loss. Expanding PROMs to include these goals may improve patient-centeredness of clinical trial and clinical care outcomes tracking.

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