Monitoring the efficiency of hearing aid fitting in the aged by the Social Hearing Handicap Index.

The unsatisfactory results obtained from tone and speech audiometric studies in identifying the effects of hearing disability, in particular the psychosocial factors, prompted us to adopt a psychological test to determine the "social hearing ability". The test consists of 20 questions which all relate to "social hearing ability" in urban society. Ten questions concern hearing ability in situations where background noise plays either a negligible role or none at all. The remaining 10 questions concern selectivity ability, that is hearing with additional background noise. The evaluation of the questionnaire results in a classification of the so-called Social Hearing Handicap Index (SHHI) in percentages together with a breakdown of the deafness components and the selectivity components into percentages. This differentiation provides additional information about the demands placed on the hearing ability of humans in quiet or noisy surroundings. The information obtained from the test enables longitudinal studies on the course of a hearing disability or the effectivity of a particular therapy, e.g. hearing aid, to be carried out in the elderly.