Perceived hearing aid benefit in relation to perceived needs.

A new scale, the Hearing Aid Needs Assessment (HANA), was developed in order to examine the relationship between perceived communication needs/expectations with the actual benefit eventually achieved with newly fitted hearing aids. A serial sample of 82 patients completed the HANA prior to hearing aid consultation. A subgroup of 42 patients eventually completed the Hearing Aid Performance Inventory after 2 to 3 months of new device use. The results indicated that candidates for amplification expect more benefit than they will typically achieve, especially when listening to speech in noise or without visual cues. For the most part, hearing aid benefit could not be reliably predicted based on perceived need or expectation.