Real World Hearing Aid Benefits Are More Apparent in Real Time: Ecological Momentary Assessment

Presented by Yu-Hsiang Wu, PhD

Director, Hearing Aid and Aging Research Lab; Associate Professor, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, the University of Iowa

Learning Objectives

1. Explain Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA).
2. List the key differences between EMA and traditional outcome measures.
3. Describe the advantages of measuring hearing aid outcomes using EMA. 

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA), a methodology that repeatedly collects real-time data in natural environments, can provide rich information to describe the effect of hearing aid technologies in various listening situations with minimum recall bias. In this presentation, hearing aid outcome data collected using EMA and traditional retrospective self-reports will be compared to illustrate that hearing aid benefits experienced by listeners in real time are often more apparent than what is conveyed in retrospective self-reports.

Dr. Yu-Hsiang Wu is the director of the Hearing Aid and Aging Research Lab and an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, the University of Iowa. His research interests include improving hearing aid outcomes for older adults by identifying factors that facilitate or prevent hearing success.