The Hearing Handicap Inventory for the Elderly – Screening Version (HHIE–S) is a well studied ten item questionnaire that measures social and emotional problems related to hearing loss. The HHIE–S has been correlated with audiometric measures of hearing loss and overall functional status. Importantly, the HHIE–S also has been found responsive to changes when persons receive hearing aids. This means when an older person with hearing loss gets a hearing aid, their HHIE–S score tends to improve. Thus, the HHIE–S has become an important health related quality-of-life measure for assessing the effectiveness of hearing rehabilitation programs.
The HHIE–S takes about two minutes to administer. The answers to each question are in a ‘Yes', ‘No', and ‘Sometimes' format. A ‘Yes' scores a 4, a ‘Sometimes' scores a 2, and a ‘No' scores a 0. The individual question scores are simply summed to give a total score. Scores range from zero to 40. A score of zero to eight indicates little trouble with hearing. Scores of 10 or more are indicative of hearing loss that might benefit from an audiologic evaluation. The higher the score, the greater the degree of hearing handicap.
This is a class activity where the students will use the HHIE–S to survey elders and then pool and graph the results of their tests.
Total HHIE–S Score | Interpretation |
---|---|
0-2 | Little evidence for hearing impairment |
4-8 | Slight evidence for hearing impairment |
10-20 | Moderate evidence for hearing impairment |
22-40 | Strong evidence for hearing impairment |
HHIE-S, survey, graph, hearing handicap inventory elderly