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DatePredictors of Hearing Aid Use Time in Children with Mild-Severe Hearing Loss

The hearing problem among the children has been a significant problem as the diagnosis has not been made possible to various factors that may include reduced parental concern as well as late diagnosis. Various factors are as well attributed to causing the mild-severe hearing loss, and due to this, there has raised a need to conduct intervention measures to help the children with hearing problems. The purpose of the study, therefore, is the investigate the predictors of hearing aid use in time for the children diagnosed with mild, severe hearing loss.

The main questions in this investigation include; which child and family specific variables predict hearing aid use time in children who are hard of hearing? And what challenges do parents encounter with hearing aid compliance across ages and situations? Besides the investigation of the predictors of hearing aid, the study also examines the barriers to consistent hearing aid use as well as the reliability of the parent report measures. The questions under this purpose include; Are parents accurate at estimating average daily hearing aid use time? And which child and family specific variables predict how accurate parents are at estimating average daily hearing aid use time?

The first study sought to determine the child and family specific variables predicted that predicted the amount of time that children wore their hearing aid, on average, during the week and on weekends. The study also examined the variation of pediatric hearing aid use across listening environments as well as the challenges that are posed by different situations for consistent hearing use. The second study sought to examine the accuracy of parental estimates of average hearing aid use time for the children during the week. The accuracy was determined through the comparison of parent report data from the hearing aid use questionnaire to the objective data logging measures that was acquired from the children’s hearing aids. In this study, the secondary objective was to investigate the variables that predicted parents’ the estimation on the accuracy of the hearing aid use time in their children.

The participants of the study included the parents of 272 children with hearing loss. The parents provided the estimated amount of time their child used the hearing aid daily. Regression analysis was used to statistically analyze the data examining the relationship among the independent variables and hearing aid use time. Data logging from the hearing aid was compared to the parental estimates to determine the parental accuracy of the hearing aid use time.

The results from the study postulated that the longer hearing aid use was related to older age, higher maternal education, and poorer hearing. The maternal education level influences the amount of time to wear hearing aids. The parental consistency ratings revealed similar findings that younger children and children with more severe hearing losses wore the hearing aids less consistently than the older children and children with more severe hearing loss. The parents’ estimation and data logging were significantly correlated. However, the results of the study suggested that parents overestimate the amount of time their children wore hearing aids.

The limitations of the study were the exclusion of the children with multiple disabilities, those who did not use English as a primary language, children with cochlear implants, children with profound deafness and unilateral hearing loss in an attempt to control the various cofound. The exclusion criteria limited the study’s ability to generalize the results beyond the current subset of children who are hard of hearing. The findings of the study provide evidence that certain variables were significantly related to the amount of time the children wore the hearing aids. The consistency rating scales gave an insight into circumstances that were challenging for families. The combination of data logging and parental estimations are crucial in that they allow the researchers and clinicians to obtain a general estimate of the hearing aid use time.