Music listening and hearing aids: perspectives from audiologists and their patients

Abstract

Objective: Two studies explored hearing-aid user and audiologist experiences of hearing-aid use and fitting for music in the UK.

Design and sample: One-hundred-seventy-six hearing-aid users (age range: 21–93 years; mean: 60.56 years) answered a 4-item questionnaire on music listening difficulties and discussions about music in clinic. 99 audiologists (age range: 22–71 years; mean: 39.18 years) answered a 36-item questionnaire on the frequency and type of discussions, training received, and strategies for optimizing hearing aids for music. Closed and open-ended questions were included.

Results: Sixty seven percent of hearing-aid users reported some degree of difficulty listening to music with hearing aids, and 58% had never discussed music in clinic. 50% of audiologists surveyed asked 1 in 5 (or fewer) patients about music and 67% had never received music-specific training. Audiologist training on music was significantly associated with confidence in providing advice, confidence in programming hearing aids for music, and programming hearing aids for music for a greater number of patients.

Conclusions: Hearing-aid users’ and audiologists’ experiences of music remain mixed. In the absence of formalised training in optimizing hearing aids for music, there is a need for systematic research relating fitting strategies to clinical outcomes and the development of guidelines for audiologist training.

Keywords:

• Hearing impairments
• hearing aids
• music listening
• audiology training
• clinical practice
• fitting procedures
• music programs

Note

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Harley Street Hearing, the British Academy of Audiology (BAA) for assistance with recruitment, Matthew Frost for his research on the taught content of audiology courses, and Amy Beeston for helpful comments and discussion.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We adopt the convention that ‘deaf’ refers to the physical condition of deafness and ‘Deaf’ refers to those who identify with the Deaf community and culture.

Additional information

Funding

The present work was financially supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [AH/M00368X/1].