The short version
- In a survey of more than 9,000 adults over 60 in Australia, Canada, England and the United States, people preferred doctors, hospitals and audiologists for hearing information, tests and hearing aids.
- The preference held whatever their degree of hearing loss, their age, their country, or whether they answered online or in person.
- The answers were collected in 2016 to 2018, before over-the-counter hearing aids arrived, so they describe what older adults wanted then, not what they buy now.
Asked where they would go to learn about hearing loss, get their hearing tested or buy a hearing aid, adults over 60 in four countries gave the same answer: a doctor, a hospital or an audiologist. Supermarkets, pharmacies, technology stores, mail order and internet ads came last. The survey, published in BMC Geriatrics on October 13, covered 2,067 people in Australia, 3,009 in Canada, 2,768 in England and 1,438 in the United States, answering online or in person.
The authors, from all four countries and funded by the US National Institutes of Health, found the pattern “remarkably similar” across degrees of hearing loss and past experience of seeking help. The catch is the date. The answers were collected in 2016 to 2018, before the pandemic, before telehealth spread and before the US allowed hearing aids to be sold over the counter in 2022. The samples were also not random, and most respondents were white. The authors say preferences “could potentially change”, and that people may simply have named the services they already knew.
Hearing Health & Technology Matters, reporting the paper, adds that most hearing-aid owners asked in 2025 still wanted professional help with their next purchase. That matters now that hearing aids are linked to longer lives and are sold in eyeglass frames.
