EMA Surveys and Listening Situations
hearing difficulties
EMA
Three times a day (10 A.M., 1 P.M., and 7:30 P.M.), a push notification invited participants to fill in short EMA surveys, to report on difficult listening situations. This concerned a clickable pop-up message accompanied by sound and vibration. The times could not be changed to the user’s preference because of technical limitations. There were two kinds of surveys: one for the identification of expected, current, or past difficult listening situations (henceforth: identification surveys), and another for evaluating the previously reported difficult listening situations, which had passed by then (evaluation surveys). Thus, the option to fill out an evaluation survey about a listening situation only appeared after the completion of the identification survey of that particular situation. Note that participants were instructed to continue as usual, and not seek out more difficult listening situations. Participants could also self-initiate surveys instead of responding to a push notification. All survey questions were multiple-choice.The identification survey comprised three to four questions and took 1 to 2 minutes. Participants selected one of 15 predefined listening situations (e.g., 1-on-1 conversation, small/big group conversations, and watching TV). See Table SM2 in Supplemental Digital Content 1 (The evaluation survey consisted of 8 to 14 questions, depending on the type of listening situation. Completion took 3 to 4 minutes, corresponding to the 3-minute limit suggested by Both EMA survey forms functioned to elicit awareness of hearing difficulties and the identification survey additionally served to select acoustically tailored snippets. Photographs and notes served to further promote hearing awareness and facilitate evaluation of the listening situations (