Tessa Watts

An exploratory study identifying a possible response shift phenomena of the Glasgow hearing aid benefit profile

A then-test technique was used to investigate the possibility of a response shift in the Glasgow hearing aid benefit profile (GHABP). Following completion of part 1 of the GHABP, 16 adults were invited for hearing-aid follow up appointments. In accordance with then-test technique, participants were asked to think back to before they had their hearing-aids fitted and the GHABP part 1 was completed again to re-establish the disability and handicap scores. These scores were then compared with the initial GHABP part I scores. Paired T testing and Wilcoxon Rank tests were carried out to investigate the statistical significance of the response shift effect. Statistically significant differences were seen between initial and retrospective GHABP (disability) scores using t test. No significant differences could be seen between the initial and retrospective handicap scores. Results suggest participants may have demonstrated a possible response shift phenomenon with the disability construct of the GHABP questionnaire, related to a possible re-calibration effect or a denial of disability effect. This exploratory study suggests that the GHABP questionnaire may be subject to a response shift phenomena. We suggest that further more robust studies are completed to verify this and recommend that this could have psychological impact on participants when explaining the results of the outcome measure and may affect hearing aid use. There is also potential for this phenomenon to affect global GHABP scores specifically when demonstrating to stakeholders the overall success of an audiology service.

Big ideas: 'Les Rites de Passage' Arnold van Gennep 1909.

van Genneps short book Les Rites de Passage was written in the early twentieth century, and at a time of intense academic interest in religion and customs and burgeoning ethnographic research offered a general classification of rites. Drawing on pre-existing sources assembled by others in the shape of selected monographs of diverse societies from different continents van Gennep identified, differentiated and described the sequence and pattern of culturally specific ceremonial rituals marking life-course transitions in ‘semicivilised’ societies. Yet, in recent decades van Genneps Les Rites of Passage has received increased attention across a range of disciplines and has captured the imagination of nurses both in practice and academia. Without doubt, vanGenneps book, reviewed positively by Frederick Starr in 1910, influenced some early twentieth century, European and American anthropologists, notably Junod (1926/2003) in his study of the Tsonga of Mozambique and the work of Chapple and Coon (1942). That van Genneps terminology has become embedded in anthropological and sociological parlance lays testimony to the influence of this text (Kimball, 1960). Yet interestingly, in his introduction to the 1960 English translation of Les Rites de Passage, the late American anthropologist, Solon Kimball points out that whilst van Genneps ‘influence has been considerable in some anthropological circles, his contribution, in general, has failed to reach the other social sciences’ (Kimball, 1960, p. v, emphasis added). Kimball goes on to explain the dual ambition for the English translation, namely: making this seminal anthropological text available to a wider audience and the further development of van Genneps conceptual schema in the modern, industrialised world. In his review of Les Rites de Passage, Robert Spencer observed that what van Gennep had to say was ‘relevant and informative’ (1961, p. 599). Similarly, Max Gluckman (1962) vented praise for: ‘the tremendous contribution he [van Gennep] made... one of the most important books written about ritual in the generation before the First World war’ (p. 1–2 brackets added). Les Rites de Passage is primarily about the importance, purpose and structural similarities in the ordering of diverse ceremonial rituals (rites), as van Gennep explained: