A home education program for older adults with hearing impairment and their significant others: A randomized trial evaluating short- and long-term effects

Abstract

This paper addresses the development and effectiveness of a home education program. The program, designed for hearing-impaired elders and their significant others (SO), deals with communication strategies and speech reading. Participants were randomly assigned to a training group (hearing aid fitting+home education program) or a control group (hearing aid fitting). The training group included 24 hearing-impaired subjects and 24 SO's. Controls were 24 affected individuals and 22 SO's. Questionnaires addressing emotional response, communication strategies and the IOI-HA, IOI-AI and IOI-SO were used. A repeated measures analysis of variance was applied to test group differences between pre, post, and 6-months follow-up measures. Increased awareness of benefits of speech reading and improved interaction with the SO were observed in the training group only (p < 0.05). No group difference on 'emotional response' was found. IOI-AI and IOI-SO demonstrated favorable attitudes towards the program. Follow-up measures showed improved quality of life and satisfaction in the training group, while a decrease was observed among the controls (p < 0.05). Some effects differed between first-time and experienced hearing aid users. Addition of services to amplification and involvement of the SO are relevant in aural rehabilitation.

Measuring outcomes of a communication program for older people with hearing impairment using the International Outcome Inventory

“…Principal components analysis could not be performed because of the small data set (n 0/29) for the questionnaire. Figure 4 shows the mean scores for each of the items on the IOI-AI in the present study compared to those obtained using the IOI-AI for older people who undertook a home education program (Kramer et al, 2005), and using the IOI-HA for older people fitted with hearing aids (Cox & Alexander, 2002 (2002) reported on a larger sample of 505 adults (Mean age 0/64 years; 45% female). The 96 participants in the current study were on average a little older (Mean age 0/77 years) and there was a greater percentage of females (59%) than in the other studies.…”

“…The outcomes for item 5 (residual participation restrictions) were significantly better in the present study than those obtained by Kramer et al, but no different from Cox and Alexander. A statistical comparison of the IOI-AI data for the present study and that of Kramer et al (2005) was not considered appropriate because of the small sample size in the Kramer et al group. However, visual inspection of the data in Figure 4 suggests a similar pattern of results in the two studies using the IOI-AI.…”

“…describe IOI-AI and IOI-AI-SO results for participants who attended the ACE; 2. investigate some of the psychometric properties of the measures; 3. compare outcomes on the IOI-AI for the ACE program with other reports in the literature using the IOI-AI (Kramer et al, 2005) and the IOI-HA Cox & Alexander, 2002).…”

“…It is therefore essential that researchers demonstrate outcomes so that all involved can make informed choices. Kramer et al (2005) recently reported results for a rehabilitation program that included hearing aid fitting and a home education program, and employed Dutch translations of the IOI-AI and IOI-AI-SO. This study of 24 older people with hearing impairment and their significant others using the modified version of the IOI indicated the potential of these measures for measuring outcomes of alternative forms of rehabilitation intervention.…”

Improving Collaborative Behaviour Planning in Adult Auditory Rehabilitation: Development of the I-PLAN Intervention Using the Behaviour Change Wheel

“…The conceptual map developed as part of this work presents several other promising targets for intervention development in this context, notably for the ongoing work on the involvement of the family and friends of the person with the hearing loss [21,44,[65][66][67].…”