@conference{holube2018a,
 author = {Holube, I. and Gablenz, P. v. and Kowalk, U. and Meis, M. and Bitzer, J.},
 title = {What’s going on? Individualized evaluation in the real world},
 abstract = {Hearing loss is a common impairment on population level. Nonetheless, hearing rehabilitation and coping essentially remain on the individual level. Since hearing loss is an individual condition, audiologists often complement audiometric profiles derived in standardized test settings with questionnaire-based disability measures addressing everyday experience. Currently used questionnaires focus on predefined listening situations and rarely take into account the individual’s specific needs and circumstances. Hence, the impact of hearing impairment on the personal everyday life and the benefit of hearing devices might not become evident. Moreover, paper-and-pencil questionnaires are usually filled out retrospectively. Therefore, the responses are potentially influenced by memory bias. To overcome the constraints of these conventional methods, we developed assessment tools for highly individual momentary data collection in every-day listening situations. The project Individual Hearing Aid Benefit in Real Life (IHAB-RL), funded by the Hearing Industry Research Consortium (IRC), forms part of our long-term research objectives. IHAB-RL focuses on the method of Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) and on behavior observation to assess the health-related quality of life as relating to social inclusion, participation, and emotional well-being. For the EMA, a smartphone system with two head-worn microphones has been devised. The hardware enables the recording of objective acoustical parameters and further off-line analysis without storing any audio signals, thus preserving the privacy of all communication partners and bystanders. The objective data is used to characterize the environment in respect to levels and spectra as well as to distinguish between the system operator’s own voice and other voices or sound sources to identify communication situations. Simultaneously, an application running on a smartphone system allows for subjective ratings on predefined scales, situational descriptions using staggered queries and free descriptions, e.g., of current activities. In addition, communication situations that are important and yet challenging to the listener are more specifically explored by systematic external observations of the individual’s body postures and movements when conversing with communication partners. A code system for behavior analysis based on the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) concepts activity and participation is used for this purpose. The presentation summarizes past experiences with these new assessment methods in audiology and opens up discussions on future cooperative research using a flexible open-source system and open databank concept. Everything from hardware design to software tools is and will be available on GitHub.},
 tags = {EMA, IHAB-RL, H+A, HALLO},
 booktitle = {International Hearing Aid Research Conference (IHCON), Lake Tahoe, CA, USA},
 year = {2018},
}