Hearing Aid Satisfaction: What Does Research from the Past 20 Years Say?

Abstract

Hearing aid satisfaction is a pleasurable emotional experience as an outcome of an evaluation of performance. Many tools have been designed to measure the degree of satisfaction overall, or along the dimensions of cost, appearance, acoustic benefit, comfort, and service. Various studies have used these tools to examine the relationships between satisfaction and other factors. Findings are not always consistent across studies, but in general, hearing aid satisfaction has been found to be related to experience, expectation, personality and attitude, usage, type of hearing aids, sound quality, listening situations, and problems in hearing aid use. Inconsistent findings across studies and difficulties in evaluating the underlying relationships are probably caused by problems with the tools (eg, lack of validity) and the methods used to evaluate relationships (eg, correlation analyses evaluate association and not causal effect). Whether satisfaction changes over time and how service satisfaction contributes to device satisfaction are unclear. It is hoped that this review will help readers understand current satisfaction measures, how various factors affect satisfaction, and how the way satisfaction is measured may be improved to yield more reliable and valid data. IntroductionSatisfaction, according to the Oxford Advanced Dictionary (2000), is the good feeling that one has achieved something or when something that one wanted to happen does happen. Satisfaction has been variably described in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1996) as the fulfillment or gratification of a desire, a need, or an appetite; a pleasure or contentment derived from such gratification; and a source or means of gratification. Similarly, Oliver (1997) defines satisfaction as a pleasurable fulfillment in that the consumer feels that his or her needs, desires, and goals have been fulfilled in a pleasurable manner. Satisfaction is thus an emotional and pleasurable experience that confirms that something right has happened and provides a driving force to sustain the effort that yields this feeling.Tse (1988) defined consumer satisfaction as "the consumer's response to the evolution of the perceived discrepancy between prior expectations and the actual performance of the product as perceived after its consumption ." Oliver (1981) further described satisfaction "as an evaluation of the surprise inherent in a product acquisition and/or consumption experience. . . . Satisfaction is the emotional reaction following a disconfirmation experience (an evaluation of performance against expectations) which acts on the base attitude level and is consumption-specific." Overall, satisfaction is commonly described as a pleasurable emotional experience, as an outcome of product performance evaluation against expectations.Satisfaction is crucial to the whole hearing aid fitting process and its importance in audiology is evidenced by the fact that it is frequently included as a measure of outcome (Cox and Alexander, 1999;Dillon et al., 1999;...

Survey on hearing aid outcome in Switzerland: Associations with type of fitting (bilateral/unilateral), level of hearing aid signal processing, and hearing loss

“…It appears that use and satisfaction represent different dimensions of hearing aid outcome. Other studies have reported correlation coefficients varying between -.24 to .66 (Wong et al, 2003). The correlation between hearing aid use (days per week) and satisfaction in this study was relatively low (r=0.25; additional analysis, not yet reported).…”

The ICF core sets for hearing loss project: International expert survey on functioning and disability of adults with hearing loss using the international classification of functioning, disability, and health (ICF)

“…Hearing aid and other assistive devices are prerequisite for many subsequent interventions such as communication strategy programmes or hearing aid counseling programmes (Abrams et al, 2002;Chisolm et al, 2004;Saunders & Forsline, 2012). Even though assistive devices provide sophisticated solutions for amplifying residual hearing, background noise remains one of the most significant barriers to hearing aid use and satisfaction (Kochkin, 2000;Wong et al, 2003). Expert responses corresponded with this phenomenon with 82.5% indicating this category.…”

Adaptive Dynamic Range Optimization (ADRO): A Digital Amplification Strategy for Hearing Aids and Cochlear Implants

“…These features can offer advantages in many difficult listening situations, but the scientific evidence that they produce a significant increase in the satisfaction of hearing aid users is still fairly weak (Wong et al, 2003). It is also clear that modern hearing aids and fit- Figure 1.…”