Development and Evaluation of a Quality of Life Inventory for
Individuals with Adult-Onset Hearing Loss

More than 31 million Americans have some degree of hearing loss, and by the year 2030, it is predicted that 21 million more adults will join them.   Despite the fact that hearing loss often has a profound influence on personal and social adjustment, employment status, and general well-being, few psychological measures currently exist to help assess these effects or evaluate intervention outcomes.

The enhancement of "quality of life" has been recognized recently as the essential purpose of health care and rehabilitation.   Although there has been a dramatic growth in quality of life research in almost every area of medicine and rehabilitation, the evaluation of quality of life for individuals with hearing loss has not commanded relatively much attention.   Possibly this is because hearing loss is invisible and not associated with mortality.   However, for those individuals who have trouble hearing, the pervasiveness of the problem can affect every aspect of their lives.   The fact that so little attention has been given to evaluating the psychosocial implications of hearing loss is rather surprising, as it ranks with arthritis, high blood pressure, and heart disease as one of the most common physical conditions. When asked, almost everyone reports knowing someone who has a hearing loss, be it a family member, a relative, a co-worker, or even themselves.

Goals and Objectives of the Project:

The purpose of this project is to develop and evaluate a standardized, psychometrically rigorous quality of life inventory for individuals with adult-onset hearing loss.   The preliminary questionnaire was developed based on extensive input from individuals who are hard of hearing and their family members.   Thus, this quality of life instrument has strived to capture the actual experience of having an adult-onset hearing loss and its impact on quality of life, rather than a researcher's assumptions about these experiences.   In addition, this particular quality of life instrument has aimed to integrate the new paradigm of disability, whereby environmental, cultural, and personal variables are considered in relation to the individual's disability.