Social Hearing Handicap Index

Abstract

As a supplement to the acoustic examination at the hearing centre, a questionnaire has devised to reflect patients’ hearing handicaps in daily life. It consists of 21 questions, with which a patient's bias to answer in scored. The principles on which the test was prepared are discussed in general and can therefore be applied to other languages. 25 normally-hearing individuals were examined, together with 198 patients with all kinds of hearing disorders; a rather high correlation (90%) was found between the social hearing handicap index (SHI), and the degree of hearing handicap (SRT). It has, however, been proved that other factor, such as lip-reading capacity, influence the social handicap. The SHI, before and after audiological treatment at the hearing centre, serves as a useful standard to control the effectiveness of our measures, since they are experienced by the patient himself.