The Effect of Pre-fitting Counselling on the Outcome of Hearing Aid Fittings

The effect of pre-fitting counselling on the outcome of fittings of NHS behind-the-ear hearing aids to adult first-time users was investigated. Questionnaires and diaries were sent both before and after fitting to 48 subjects who were given pre-fitting counselling and 47 control subjects, all of whom were fitted with standard NHS hearing aids in Southampton or Bath between September 1989 and July 1991. The test and control groups had similar distributions of age, sex and hearing loss. Analysis of the data showed that the counselling had no significant effect on levels of satisfaction, aid usage or benefit; these outcome measures also showed no significant correlation with any of the personal characteristics or attitude factors which were studied.