The influence of the daily-life relevance of APHAB-questions on answering the APHAB-questions itself

摘要

Objective The APHAB questionnaire measures the subjective hearing impairment in different daily-life situations. Recently, a survey investigated the daily life relevance of APHAB-questions. This study should evaluate the influence of the daily-life relevance of each APHAB question on the answers of the APHAB questions itself. Methods Between July 2016 and November 2017, the amount of 517 hearing impaired out-clinic patients from 11 different ENT-offices in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, have been investigated by using the APHAB. Additionally, every APHAB question ought to be evaluated with respect to its daily life relevance using a four-step scale (often - sometimes - rarely - never) as well. The answers have been listed in a cross-table and statistically analyzed using the chi (2) -test and Cramers V. Results The average age of all subjects was 67.4 years (+/- 14.0 years); the gender of 45.3 % of all participants was female and 54.7 % was male. Using the chi (2) -test and Cramers V, 4 questions of the EC-, 3 of the BN-, and 2 of the RV-subscale had a middle-grade level of coherence. Regarding a weak level of coherence, the results were exactly the opposite. However, most of the inverted APHAB-questions demonstrated such a weak coherence using Cramers V (p < 0.001). Conclusions Indeed, a correlation between daily-life relevance and ranking of APHAB-questions could be demonstrated. This coherence is in a half of the APHAB-questions weak and in a half middle-grade. The reasons are unclear and need further investigation.