Disagreements between clients and family members regarding clients’ hearing and rehabilitation within audiology appointments for older adults

Family members are significantly affected by the consequences of hearing impairment and can potentially play an important role in a client's hearing rehabilitation. This paper uses two types of interaction analysis (Roter Interaction Analysis System (RIAS) and Conversation Analysis (CA)) to examine family member participation in a corpus of 17 video-recorded initial audiology appointments. RIAS results demonstrated that family members’ primary active communication role in consultations involved information provision. The CA findings supported this, and additionally identified that when family members provided additional information, it was often in disaffiliation with clients’ descriptions. In particular, disaffiliation arose concerning the extent of the client's hearing difficulties and the client's hearing rehabilitation needs. These ‘disagreements’ between clients and family members are analysed in detail, including how they were typically responded to by the audiologist. The implications of these disagreements are discussed in relation to family-centred care and effective rehabilitation in audiology.