A Grounded Theory of Listening Effort v2.0
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The effects of listening effort on the speech understanding abilities and quality of life of adults with acquired sensorineural hearing loss: A Grounded Theory approach to subjective patient data.
IRAS ID
158642
Contact name
Sarah E. Hughes
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Abertawe Bro Morgannwgy University Health Board
Research summary
Listening effort is how hard people work at listening to understand speech. People with hearing loss report listening is tiring and takes a great deal of mental energy. Listening is the interaction between hearing and cognitive functions such as attention and memory. Researchers are working to understand listening effort but as yet the theoretical underpinnings are unclear, reflecting the relative immaturity of this area of study.
By using patients' own accounts and reflections on personal experiences of listening effort, this study aims to develop an understanding of listening effort from the patient perspective, an approach to the phenomenon that has not yet been undertaken.
The study is a qualitative study using a Grounded Theory approach. The study will last approximately six months and participants will expect to have give up from 1 to 3 hours of their time.
The participants will be 1) adults with severe-to-profound hearing loss referred to a Welsh cochlear implant centre and 2) significant others.
Three focus groups (six participants per group) will be held (mixed patient and significant other). Each focus group will last one hour and be audio-recorded and transcribed. The transcripts will be analysed and categorised according to Grounded Theory principles.
A questionnaire, developed from analysis of the focus group data, will be sent to a sample of deafened adults referred for cochlear implantation in Wales. The questionnaire data will be collated with the focus group dataset and analysed to build a comprehensive Grounded Theory of listening effort from the subjective, patient perspective, concentrated on patient and significant other accounts and reflections on personal experience.
The findings will be used in future work to develop a subjective clinical measure of listening effort for use in the cochlear implant clinic.
REC name
East Midlands - Leicester South Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/EM/1167
Date of REC Opinion
7 Oct 2014
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion