Alltagsrelevanz der APHAB-Fragen: Einfluss auf die Beantwortungshäufigkeit

Background: The Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit (APHAB) questionnaire measures subjective hearing impairment in different situations. Recently, a survey demonstrated that some APHAB questions were answered more rarely than others. This study aims to evaluate the everyday relevance of each APHAB question and investigate whether this relevance for daily life influences answer frequency. Methods: Between July 2016 and November 2017, 517 hearing impaired patients from 11 ENT practices in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, were evaluated using the APHAB. In parallel, the everyday relevance of each APHAB question for the subjects was assessed on a four-step scale (often/sometimes/rarely/never). The answers were listed in a cross table and statistically analyzed. Results: The average age of all subjects was 67.4 years (±14.0 years); 45.3% were female and 54.7% were male. One APHAB question (no. 21) was answered noticeably less often than the others. Overall, five types of distribution for the everyday relevance of APHAB questions could be determined. Using the χ²-test, no correlation between the frequency of answers and their everyday relevance could be detected (p < 0.001). Conclusion: No correlation between everyday relevance and answer frequency was detected. However, the five types of distribution could be used for an individual interpretation of single APHAB answers. In the future, a possible influence of everyday relevance on ranking within a specific APHAB answer should be investigated.