OHL Questionnaire Results and Conclusions

Suppose you decide to visit a vocational rehabilitation agency for assistance. Your local agency is very enlightened and progressive, and you may select a hearing counselor, an Oral Hearing Loss (OHL) counselor, or a Deaf counselor. Please rank these counselors in the order you would be most likely to select them, from most likely (1) to least likely (3).

Thirty-three people responded to this question. Each of the choices was ranked with a number from one to three. The average rank is provided for each of the categories.
OHL - 1.1
Hearing - 2.0
Deaf - 2.9

Respondents' Comments:
Don't care/want best person (3)
Don't want/would not accept a Deaf counselor (4)

Analysis and Comments

The vast majority of respondents (24 of 33) preferred an OHL counselor first, a hearing counselor second, and a Deaf counselor third. Four preferred the order: OHL, Deaf, hearing; four preferred hearing, OHL, Deaf; one preferred OHL and hearing equally, with a Deaf counselor as the third choice.

Combining the responses in a slightly different way, 28 of 33 respondents selected an OHL counselor as their first choice, one had an OHL counselor tied for first , and four selected an OHL counselor as their second choice.

Four people chose a hearing counselor as their first choice, 24 as their second choice, four as their third choice, and one had a hearing counselor tied for first.

Four people chose a Deaf counselor as their second choice, and the other 29 chose a Deaf counselor as their third choice.

Question 7

Now suppose you visit your local (real world) vocational rehabilitation agency and are ASSIGNED a counselor. Please rank the three counselors from Question 6 in terms of which you would most likely be assigned, from most likely (1) to least likely (3). Please leave this question blank if you don't know enough about your local agency to answer it.

Only ten people responded to this question, indicating that most of the respondents aren't familiar with their local vocational rehabilitation services. The average scores were:
Deaf - 1.5
Hearing - 1.8
OHL - 2.7

Respondents' Comments:
- VR doesn't have a clue about OHL folks (2)
- I was assigned a hearing counselor because that's all they had
- Really wouldn't get OHL counselor, because they don't have any (5)
- Wouldn't use VR - they know nothing about OHL

Analysis and Comments

The most striking characteristic of the responses to this question is that a counselor is likely to be assigned to OHL folks in reverse order to their preferences! While people's strong preference is the order OHL, hearing, Deaf, the order in which a counselor would likely be assigned is Deaf, hearing, OHL.

The other striking thing about the responses is that almost all respondents added a comment that VR doesn't have OHL counselors, VR knows nothing about OHL folks, etc!

Eight of ten respondents replied that an OHL counselor would be LEAST likely assignment, despite the fact that an OHL counselor was the first choice of over 85% of them.

Five respondents stated that they would most likely be assigned a Deaf counselor; two, a hearing counselor; one an OHL counselor; and two declared that a Deaf counselor and a hearing counselor are equally likely.

Question 8

Please add any comments you'd like to make.

We received lots of comments here, and it was tough to pick just a few representatives to include here. Here are the ones we chose:

- I think this is great! I'm getting tired of having people say, "Huh?" when I ask about assistive devices and "no" in response to the request for CART.

- I think the #1 thing is to reach those younger adults who are losing their hearing. Why aren't audiologists doing more? My own audiologist told me he thought I was too young for the local SHHH groups so he didn't even tell me about them!

- I feel the OHL and late deafened communities are not understood or misunderstood. Our needs are not being met without fighting for them. Even after you express your needs, too many don't understand. If you comprehend under some circumstances and not another, they think you are faking it. People don't understand how to communicate with us. Too many pubic places do not have any accommodation for us.

- We need to teach OHL folks to self-advocate.