Question
I'm looking for a new self-assessment inventory to use with my patients, and I've heard about a scale called the HASP. Could you tell me more about it, and where I can find it? Also, does it have computer scoring?
Answer
Thanks for asking about the Hearing Aid Selection Profile (HASP). We spent considerable time and effort in its development, and I'm glad to hear you are considering using it in your clinic. As you maybe know, when we introduced the HASP, its complete name was the "Three-Clinic" HASP (Jacobson, Newman, Fabry, & Sandridge, 2001). The three clinics were Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Cleveland, Ohio (Craig Newman and Sharon Sandridge) Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota (where David Fabry was working at the time) and Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, where I was working at the time. The purpose of the HASP is to include patients' self-perceptions in many areas related to core beliefs and attitudes that might impact the successful selection and fitting of amplification.
It may not be the shortest pre-test available, but I think you'll find the breadth of the information it provides worth the extra time. The HASP is a 40-item self-report measure, to be given prior to the selection and fitting of hearing aids. It contains eight subscales, each consisting of five items. The response format is a 5-point Likert scale with anchors of Strongly Agree and Strongly Disagree yielding a maximum score of 20 points per subscale. Three of the eight subscales address issues directly related to hearing aids (motivation, expectations and general communication needs) and 5 subscales contain items that assess a patient's perceptions and attitudes about issues not directly related to the use of hearing aids: cosmetics, attitude toward cost, attitude toward technology, physical functioning and lifestyle.
In general, we designed the HASP to provide the audiologist with a wide range of information that could be useful in the hearing aid selection process. Certainly, the results from some of the subscales could impact on the selection of hearing aid style or special hearing aid features. We also found that the HASP could be used as a predictor of who is "at risk" for using hearing aids. For example, our research showed that people who returned their hearing aids for credit tended to have below average HASP subscale scores for Motivation, Physical (hand and finger dexterity) and Communication Needs (Jacobson, Newman, Sandridge, & McCaslin, 2002).
I encourage you to try out the HASP with your patients and see what you think. The form is available HERE (PDF).
I also have provided an Excel spreadsheet that will help with scoring, and provides a convenient printout. Once the data is entered into the spreadsheet a graphic representation of the data appears. The graph overlays the patient's data onto normative data so that individual patients can be compared to a larger group. You can obtain the Excel file HERE (Excel Spreadsheet).
References
Jacobson, G.P., Newman, C.W., Sandridge, S.A., & McCaslin, D.L. (2002). Using the Hearing Aid Selection Profile to identify factors in hearing aid returns. Hearing Journal, 55(2), 30 - 33.
Jacobson, G.P., Newman, C.W., Fabry, D.A., & Sandridge, S.A. (2001). Development of the three-clinic Hearing Aid Selection Profile. Journal of the American Academy of Audiology, 12, 128-141.
Dr. Gary Jacobson is a Professor at Vanderbilt University, Director of the Division of Audiology, and Co-director of the Division of Vestibular Sciences at the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He is past editor of the American Journal of Audiology and current editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Audiology. Dr. Jacobson is co-editor of the textbooks "Handbook of Balance Function Testing" and "Balance Function Assessment and Management." He is recipient of the Honors of the American Speech-Language Hearing Association, as well as the Jerger Career Award for Research in Audiology from the American Academy of Audiology.
