To facilitate participation in hearing situations at work sites persons with hearing loss may use assistive listening devices (ALDs). Compared to personal hearing aids ALDs have received little research attention. The aim of this study was dual; firstly to describe ALD-users in Sweden and the usefulness of various equipment in relation to specified hearing situations at work. Secondly, to describe favorable and non favorable conditions for using ADL at everyday situations at work. Seventy ADL-users answered a questionnaire and eleven of these persons were subsequently interviewed. The concept of stigma has been identified in research on hearing loss as a strong factor of denial and resistance for the use of both hearing aids and ALDs, depending on the negative connotations related to visible means for hearing. In this study overcoming stigmatization was further analyzed using social recognition as a theoretical approach. In a concluding discussion, where both categorizations and themes from the interviews were used, it issuggested that the use of visible ALDs is a way of overcoming stigmatization and that their visibility function as a mechanism in developing mutual social recognition in the work group.Though the results show a fairly high degree of usefulness from ALDs, work place adaptations should to a greater extent pay attention to environmental factors (e.g. noise and bad acoustics) influencing the use of this technology. More information on such factors is needed from studies of realistic situations at concrete work sites. Conclusions from this study are mainly valid for this sample; knowledge of the population is small due to lack of registers kept by the providers of this technology. To facilitate further studies on employed persons with hearing loss available statistics could be significantly improved by keeping records on both medical data and all kinds of rehabilitative adaptations measures.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:oru-20593 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Bjarnason, Sif |
| Publisher | Örebro universitet, Hälsoakademin, Örebro : Örebro universitet |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Licentiate thesis, monograph, info:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | Studies from The Swedish Institute for Disability Research, 1650-1128 ; 38 |
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