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.