Feasibility of the HEAR-aware App for Hearing Loss Self-Management: A Nonrandomized Intervention Study to Examine Intervention Acceptability and the Stages-of-Change Concept.
Marieke Pronk, Vanessa Feenstra-Kikken, Cas Smits and 5 others
PMID 37677943WHAT IT FOUND
Adults declining hearing aids found this app generally usable but struggled to log daily listening situations.
Most said the surveys gave them insight into their hearing, though many found the educational snippets unhelpful for the specific situations they reported.
Key findings
01Only 8% of app users met the target of logging 1.5 difficult listening situations per day, and 46% reported encountering fewer such situations due to COVID-19 lockdown measures.
0277% of participants indicated that completing the app's surveys provided them with greater insight into their hearing difficulties.
03In 35% of cases, participants rated the educational snippets as not helpful for the specific listening situation they had just reported.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study was conducted during the COVID-19 lockdown, which significantly reduced social interactions and likely depressed the number of difficult listening situations participants could report. The sample size was small (26 app users) and recruited from a single hearing aid retailer's database, limiting generalizability. There was no control group, so it is impossible to know if the app caused the reported increase in insight or if participants would have gained this awareness through other means. Compliance with the primary intervention (logging situations) was very low, meaning the results reflect the experience of a highly motivated subset of users.
Declared interests
Three authors declared an employment relationship with Sonova, a major hearing aid manufacturer. The study was supported by non-U.S. government funding.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the 77% increase in insight as evidence that the app improves hearing aid uptake or self-management outcomes. The study measured perceived insight and acceptability, not behavioral change or clinical improvement, and the low compliance rate suggests most users did not engage with the app enough to potentially achieve those outcomes.