Hey Matthias, Hersbach Adam A, Hocke Thomas, Mauger Stefan J, Böhnke Britta, Mewes Alexander
Audiology, ENT Clinic, UKSH, 24105 Kiel, Germany.
Research and Development, Cochlear Limited, Melbourne, VIC 3000, Australia.
J Clin Med. 2022 May 23;11(10):2941. doi: 10.3390/jcm11102941.
To assess the performance of cochlear implant users, speech comprehension benefits are generally measured in controlled sound room environments of the laboratory. For field-based assessment of preference, questionnaires are generally used. Since questionnaires are typically administered at the end of an experimental period, they can be inaccurate due to retrospective recall. An alternative known as ecological momentary assessment (EMA) has begun to be used for clinical research. The objective of this study was to determine the feasibility of using EMA to obtain in-the-moment responses from cochlear implant users describing their technology preference in specific acoustic listening situations.
Over a two-week period, eleven adult cochlear implant users compared two listening programs containing different sound processing technologies during everyday take-home use. Their task was to compare and vote for their preferred program.
A total of 205 votes were collected from acoustic environments that were classified into six listening scenes. The analysis yielded different patterns of voting among the subjects. Two subjects had a consistent preference for one sound processing technology across all acoustic scenes, three subjects changed their preference based on the acoustic scene, and six subjects had no conclusive preference for either technology.
Results show that EMA is suitable for quantifying real-world self-reported preference, showing inter-subject variability in different listening environments. However, there is uncertainty that patients will not provide sufficient spontaneous feedback. One improvement for future research is a participant forced prompt to improve response rates.
为评估人工耳蜗使用者的表现，言语理解受益情况通常在实验室的可控隔音室环境中进行测量。对于基于实地的偏好评估，一般使用问卷调查。由于问卷调查通常在实验期结束时进行，因回顾性回忆可能会不准确。一种称为生态瞬时评估（EMA）的方法已开始用于临床研究。本研究的目的是确定使用EMA从人工耳蜗使用者那里获得即时反应的可行性，这些反应描述了他们在特定声学聆听情境下对技术的偏好。
在两周时间内，11名成年人工耳蜗使用者在日常带回家使用期间比较了两个包含不同声音处理技术的聆听程序。他们的任务是比较并投票选出他们更喜欢的程序。
从被分类为六个聆听场景的声学环境中总共收集到205张选票。分析得出受试者之间不同的投票模式。两名受试者在所有声学场景中始终偏好一种声音处理技术，三名受试者根据声学场景改变了他们的偏好，六名受试者对两种技术都没有决定性的偏好。
结果表明，EMA适用于量化现实世界中自我报告的偏好，显示出不同聆听环境下受试者之间的变异性。然而，存在患者不会提供足够自发反馈的不确定性。未来研究的一个改进是促使参与者做出回应以提高回复率。
