Appendix A

Glossary

The committee presents a glossary of select terms that are defined in the context in which they are used in the report. This list of terms is not exhaustive, and some terms are discussed more fully in Chapters 1 and 6.

GLOSSARY

Acquired hearing loss A hearing loss that appears after birth, at any time in one’s life, perhaps as a result of a disease, a condition, aging, or an injury.

Adult-onset hearing loss Hearing loss that develops during adulthood.

Audibility Detection of sound.

Clinical significance Assessment of whether findings contribute to medical care resulting in the improvement of individual physical function and ability to engage in social life.

Clinicians of first contact The first health care provider an individual may encounter who could support an intervention pathway for a problem. In the case of hearing health care, this may be a primary care clinician or in some cases, patients may be able to directly access hearing health care from an audiologist.

Cognitive health Refers to the ability to clearly think, learn, and remember.

Communication The exchange of ideas and thoughts among two or more individuals.

Community partners A person with an interest or concern in a topic of interest.

Complex listening situation Any listening situation that requires listening effort because of interfering signals (e.g., noise or other competing sound, accented speech, unfamiliar language).

Core set of outcomes An agreed-upon standardized minimum set of outcomes that are measured and reported across settings and interventions.

Detection The ability to identify that a sound (e.g., beeps, tones, speech, or other sound output) is present.

Distal outcomes Outcomes that are downstream from an intervention and that take time to actualize.

Effectiveness The performance of an intervention under real-world circumstances.

Efficacy The performance of an intervention under ideal and controlled circumstances.

Health outcome The effect of a health care service or intervention (or a lack of a health care service or intervention).

Health-related quality of life The physical and mental health aspects of quality of life.

Hearing The mental and physical ability to perceive sounds.

Hearing health care Care for the assessment and treatment of hearing-related conditions.

Hearing-related quality of life The hearing health aspects of quality of life.

Implementation science The scientific study of methods and strategies that facilitate the uptake of evidence-based practice and research into regular use by practitioners and policy makers.

Listening effort The resources or energy necessary or used by a listener in real time to meet the cognitive demand needed to understand when people are speaking.

Listening fatigue Cognitive exhaustion caused by increased efforts to listen and comprehend others when they are speaking that accumulate over time.

Localization The ability to identify the placement of a sound source in a sound field.

Loneliness The perception of social isolation or the subjective feeling of being lonely.

Meaningful outcome A result from treatment that is important to the adult with hearing difficulties and the clinician.

Measurement bias Nonrandom difference from a true measurement.

Measurement error The difference between the observed value (the result of measurement) and the actual value of what is being measured (contains random and nonrandom error).

Noise Any unwanted signal that interferes with the signal of interest. Wanted sound, such as loud music at a concert venue, may also interfere with communication, but is not included in the definition of noise.

Outcome domain A grouping category that encompasses a family of related outcomes.

Outcome measure A tool that assesses or captures the impact of an intervention on an outcome.

Participation Involvement in a life situation.

Participation restriction Limitation of involvement in a life situation.

Patient-reported outcome measures (PROM) An assessment of an outcome that is directly reported by the patient who experienced it or their proxy.

Physical function The ability to perform basic and complex activities of daily living.

Proximal outcome An immediate outcome of a treatment. For hearing health interventions, the proximal outcome is verification of audibility.

Psychological health Encompasses emotional, psychological, and social well-being, influencing cognition, perception, and behavior.

Quality of life An individual’s subjective well-being and ability to lead a fulfilling life. Common facets of quality of life include such things as physical and mental health, relationships, work environment, social status, wealth, a sense of security and safety, freedom, social belonging, and physical surroundings.

Reliability The degree to which the content of a measurement instrument is an adequate reflection of the construct to be measured.

Sensitivity to change The ability of a measurement instrument to detect change over time in the construct to be measured. Also known as responsiveness.

Social connection An umbrella term that encompasses the structural, functional, and quality aspects of how individuals connect to each other.

Social isolation The objective state of having few social relationships or infrequent social contact with others.

Speech communication The use of the oral medium of passing information, whether formally or informally, by a speaker to an audience.

Speech in noise The ability to detect and understand speech in complex listening environments (e.g., background speech, music, accents, unfamiliar words, reverberation).

Validity The extent to which the results of a measurement actually reflect what they are intended to measure; how accurate is the measure.

Verification Confirmation that the treatment at the most basic level is doing what it was intended to do (e.g., a hearing aid is making sound audible).

This page intentionally left blank.