title: Is measured hearing aid benefit affected by seeing baseline outcome questionnaire responses?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To determine whether hearing aid outcome measured by the Hearing Handicap Inventory (HHI) for the Elderly/Adults (Newman, Weinstein, Jacobson, & Hug, 1990; Ventry & Weinstein, 1982) is differentially affected by informed vs. blind administration of the postfitting questionnaire.
  
  
  METHODS
  Participants completed the HHI at their hearing aid evaluation and again at their hearing aid follow-up visit. At follow-up, half received a clean HHI form (blind administration), whereas the remainder responded on their original form (informed administration) and could thus base their follow-up responses on those they gave at the hearing aid evaluation.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The data show that for the population examined here, informed administration of the follow-up HHI did not yield a different outcome to blind administration of the follow-up HHI. This was not influenced by past hearing aid use, age of the participant, or the duration of time between baseline questionnaire completion and follow-up completion.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These data suggest that completion of follow-up questionnaires in either informed or blind format will have little impact on HHI responses, most likely because of the many other factors that combined to influence hearing aid outcome.
authors.affiliation: National Center for Rehabilitative Auditory Research, Portland VA Medical Center, OR, USA.
authors.forename: ShienPei
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Silverman
authors.forename: Megan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cates
authors.forename: Gabrielle
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Saunders
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D001294:Attitude to Health; D012048:Correction of Hearing Impairment / Q000523:psychology*; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006310:Hearing Aids; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000523:psychology* / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014728:Veterans / Q000523:psychology