Narratives of identity: understanding the experiences of adults with hearing loss who use hearing aids

Abstract

Objective: We aimed to determine the identities that adults with hearing loss construct when telling stories about their experiences with hearing loss and hearing aids. Determining and understanding these identities is important because research shows that who a person believes themselves to be has implications for how they approach their healthcare, along with their emotional and physical wellbeing.

Design: We employed a qualitative narrative approach. We then used thematic narrative analysis to identify emergent identities across stories gathered from hearing aid users. These themes allowed us to assign emergent identities to the hearing-aid users.

Study Sample: Thirty adults with hearing loss who reported using their hearing aids during all waking hours.

Results: Five identities emerged from the hearing-aid users’ narratives: (1) the satisfied user, (2) the overcomer, (3) the dispassionate user, (4) the frustrated and resigned user, and (5) the griever.

Conclusion: These findings are a first step to improving theoretical and clinical insights into the perspectives and experiences of satisfied hearing-aid users following diagnosis of their hearing loss and their hearing aid fittings. Such insights could ultimately improve hearing healthcare providers’ abilities to employ person-centered care while helping adults with hearing loss seek out, implement, and adhere to treatment.

Keywords:

• Hearing aids
• identities
• thematic narrative analysis
• hearing loss
• narrative sensemaking

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Note

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank everyone who felt comfortable sharing their stories with us. Without people like them, this research would not be possible. We are also grateful to Nicole Trusty, Emma Brown, Dane Whittaker, and the members of the Aural Rehabilitation Lab for all the time they spent transcribing narrative interviews.

Disclosure statement

There are no financial disclosures/conflicts of interest to report for this research.

Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author, BAB. The data are not publicly available due to their containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.

Notes

1 Keeping a story intact means we focused on identity types instead of coding for aspects of a person’s story that stand a contextual to their more holistic experience. From these intact stories, one can expect a typology of some sort—a typology of identities (e.g. Pederson 2013; Thomas 2014; Scranton 2015) or a typology of stories (e.g. Scharp, Thomas, Paxman, 2015) to emerge.