By Erin Jester
Ava Moran, a third-year University of Florida Doctor of Audiology student, spent her summer at the Dan Maddox Hearing Aid Research Laboratory at Vanderbilt University, where she participated in a research training program designed to give budding audiologists hands-on experience in the laboratories of experienced researchers.
The prestigious short-term training grant, known as a T35, was funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
“These traineeships are highly competitive,” said Hollea Ryan, Ph.D., Au.D., audiology program director and a clinical associate professor in the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions’ Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences. Moran was one of only five audiology students in the country selected for the training program this year.
Over the last four years, three students from UF’s audiology program have participated in a T35 traineeship; two at Vanderbilt (including Moran) and one at Boys Town National Research Hospital in Nebraska.
Moran’s research project explored predecisional distortion bias in patients choosing between over-the-counter and prescription hearing aids. Predecisional distortion bias is a psychological phenomenon in which receiving favorable information about one option early in the decision-making process creates positive bias, even if the patient views the options as being equal.
The project took the form of an online survey, presenting information such as cost and warranty about over-the-counter and prescription hearing aids, without identifying them. Participants were asked to rate the hearing aids’ favorability, and researchers were able to collect demographic information and insight into how participants made their decisions.
Moran said the most difficult part of crafting the project was that other research into predecisional bias mostly involved low-risk decisions, like choosing a backpack or a restaurant. To reduce bias as much as possible in the survey itself, Moran ran two pilot studies to refine the information she was presenting about the hearing aids and make sure there was no leading notion to differentiate them.
“The goal was to see how to reduce bias to make sure that people can make the decision that’s best for them,” which will inform how health care professionals can explain options to patients without accidentally leading them toward one option over another, she said.
Moran is continuing to work on the project through the rest of the year, analyzing data and preparing to present her findings at the American Auditory Society’s annual conference in February.
She said the training program unexpectedly shifted her outlook on her career, and she plans to pursue a Ph.D. after finishing her Au.D.
“I was really unsure about pursuing research,” Moran said. “I’ve been very clinically focused in my time at UF, but I strive to be an evidence-based clinician, and to have that background is super helpful. It’s a tool in the toolbelt.”
She was especially excited to be mentored by Todd Ricketts, Ph.D., a professor of in the Vanderbilt School of Medicine’s Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences at Vanderbilt who also wrote many of the textbooks Moran has encountered in her training.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better experience,” Moran said.