AES Section Meeting Reports

Presenter Nadja Schinkel-Bielefeld (green frame) and the attendees Thomas Lechner, Miguel Conradi, Beat W. Hohmann, Carlotta Anemüller, Jonathan Ziegler, Till Gerneth, Jonas Ekeroot, Miche Naziri, Elena Shabalina, Rafael Kassier, Tobias Goldmann and others

Meeting Topic: AES SGS Research Colloquium #1: Ecological Momentary Assessment - Evaluating Hearing Aids in Real Life

Moderator Name: Elena Shabalina - d&b audiotechnik GmbH

Speaker Name: Nadja Schinkel-Bielefeld - Sivantos GmbH

Other business or activities at the meeting: there will be a Q&A session after the talk.

Meeting Location: Zoom virtual Meeting (5pm Central European Time / Germany time zone)

Summary

The presentation by Nadja Schinkel-Bielefeld was the first event of the 2021 Research Colloquium series hosted by the AES South German Section.The presentation was attended by a live audience of as many as fifty people.
Nadja pointed out the great need for properly fitting hearing aids in real life and the resulting potential to empower the client. To evaluate hearing aid settings in real life, ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is a method to support laboratory tests with field experiments and practical usage of hearing aids in everyday life. Feedback was obtained from the test participants using a smartphone application which also records data from the hearing aids. Nadja presented the research she is conducting with her team. Results showed that, although data is difficult to interpret as there are many influencing factors to consider when working with humans, useful insights can be gained from EMA tests. Furthermore, she pointed out methods to minimize systematic biases to get reliable data from EMA hearing aid tests and even showed how this method can be used to perform contactless research during the Covid-19 pandemic.
We say thank you to Nadja for the very impressive, informative talk and sharing her research with us!

A recording of the talk is available on YouTube
https://youtu.be/TmC7NQ7tRjI?t=695

Find out more about Nadja's research:
Evaluation of Hearing Aids in Everyday Life Using Ecological Momentary Assessment: What Situations Are We Missing?
https://pubs.asha.org/doi/full/10.1044/2020_AJA-19-00075

What helps or hinders hearing aid wearers to change hearing aid programs?
https://www.egms.de/static/de/meetings/dga2020/20dga182.shtml

For more information about the event, please have a look on our section blog post.
http://www.aes.org/sections/southgerman/blog/2020/12/meeting-2021-1-19

Written By: Tobias Goldmann

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