Designing a Hearing Health Care Smartphone App With Ecological Momentary Assessment: A Qualitative Study of Audiologists' Perspectives

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the perspectives of audiologists to provide input into development of a smartphone application (app) to document the real-life listening difficulties and the listening environment of hearing aid candidates and users. Method: Two focus groups were conducted. Facilitators utilized a topic guide to generate participants' input and perspectives. The focus groups were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The transcripts were then qualitatively analyzed using content analysis. Study Sample: The study samples were 10 audiologists (seven females) with 2- to 10-plus years of hearing aid fitting experience. Results: Three main categories were identified: (a) The mobile device app could provide meaningful information to help audiologists to counsel their clients, (b) the app could give clients an insight into their hearing difficulties, and (c) the app could help clients to self-manage their hearing condition. Conclusion: These findings suggest that audiologists may better understand their clients' real-life listening difficulties through the use of a mobile device app; however, further research is required to harness the benefits of such an app.