NIU

School Paper

Posted by Stacy on Tuesday, February 24, 2009 9:58 AM

For a school paper for my anatomy class, a partner and I did a project and research paper on hearing aids. We had to interview people (we sent out an email to the entire school) who had now or had ever had a hearing aid and we asked them questions about their quality of life with and without them.

It was interesting to hear from both people who had needed hearing aids their entire life and people that had lived without them and then needed them later on for some reason. Both of those groups had a completely different outlook. People who had needed them their whole life really praised them and had no faults. On the other hand, the majority of people who needed them later on in life found them faulty and were not impressed with their quality of hearing once they had them (but they also had non problem hearing in the past to compare it to). We also researched and looked into different kinds, like digital hearing aids and different cases and situations in where people needed them and why.

We had to use support for our research paper so we looked in medical journals and books and found some hearing aid reviews from people who had previously done a study on them. We actually found two different studies done, one by a person who was deaf and at one point in his life had needed hearing aids and another by someone who wasn't but was just interested in the subject. That was extremely interesting to see their outlooks and how much they differed but were also the same.

I think we actually learned a lot from doing this paper. At first when we got our topic we thought it would be kind of dull compared to some of the other ones that our classmates got. But our presentation and research paper turned out to be one of the more interesting ones in all of the classes. It was surprising to us (and I think our classmates and professors) how many people on campus (and our school isn't very big) actually had a hearing problem and needed or needed in the past hearing aids (and even someone in our class had them and we had no idea). It makes it more interesting when people can relate to studies and papers and projects that we do.