Core Values in the Traditional Provision of Hearing Health Care

Purpose: Untreated hearing loss is a significant public health issue affecting the quality of life of millions of Americans. Barriers to treatment invite novel and innovation solutions, but as these solutions create new treatment delivery models, they also may--purposefully or accidentally--challenge the values of the field. Method: Value-sensitive design methodology is used in this study to identify the values in current hearing health care service delivery. We performed qualitative content analysis of questionnaires, clinical practice guidelines, and professional ethics documents that represent the intended and enacted values in audiology. Results: The result is a comprehensive list of values that can be used as a structured codebook for systematic textual analysis of materials representing current best practices in the provision of hearing health care services. A secondary result is an analysis of the relative importance of values in audiology, inferred from the frequency of references to each value. Conclusions: Subjective benefit, professional duties, and self-efficacy were the core values identified in the current provision of audiologic care, and these values should be central to considerations for new hearing health care models and technologies.