What Keeps Older Adults With Hearing Impairment From Adopting Hearing Aids?

The design was cross-sectional and used data collected at one time point, so it cannot show whether hearing aid use changed health, cognition, technology use, or socioeconomic status, or whether those factors came first. Participants were older German-speaking adults with mild-to-moderate symmetric sensorineural hearing loss, so results may not apply to younger people, asymmetric or severe hearing loss, other languages, or other health systems. The analysis excluded people with suspected dementia, air-bone gaps, asymmetric loss, or more than 25% missing values, and the final matched samples were smaller than the original 211 adults. Volunteers who completed a large test battery may be more socially engaged or more advantaged in health, cognition, technology use, or socioeconomic status than the broader hearing-impaired population. Important factors such as hearing aid stigma, cost, and rehabilitation pathways were not measured directly, although the authors discuss cost as a possible explanation for socioeconomic differences. Hearing problems, health, technology, and media use were partly self-reported, so responses may reflect awareness or personality as well as actual ability.

The supplied text reports funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and no other conflicts of interest.

Do not conclude that hearing aids improve health, cognition, socioeconomic status, or technology use. The study compared people who already used hearing aids with people who did not at one time point, so it shows associations but not cause and effect.