Summary 184 Summary Hearing loss can affect work functioning. For example, employees with hearing loss may experience higher levels of listening effort during the performance of auditory job tasks, may have higher need for recovery after work, or may not be able to fulfill hearing-critical job tasks. Part I: Factors influencing professional functioning Following an explorative approach, a model was proposed in chapter 1 of factors influencing the need for recovery and listening effort of employees with hearing loss. For this study, routine health care data were analyzed of 294 employees who were referred to the ENT-Audiology department of the Amsterdam UMC by their occupational physician. In total, 43 percent of the variance in listening effort could be explained by four factors, respectively ‘the feeling that something should change’, the degree of hearing loss (binaurally, calculated based on pure-tone audiometry thresholds), auditory work demands, and personal adjustments (part of hearingrelated coping behavior). Regarding the factors directly influencing the need for recovery, also four factors were identified. In total, 46 percent of the variance in the need for recovery could be explained by the factors listening effort, ‘feeling that something should change at work’, personal adjustments and the general health condition. The outcomes of hearing tests were not significantly associated with the need for recovery. This suggests that the way employees perceive their hearing loss and how they cope with it directly influence need for recovery, rather than their measured degree of hearing loss. In chapter 3, the associations of the model proposed in chapter 1 was confirmed in a different population of employees with hearing loss. In chapter 2, we further zoomed into the association between hearing, listening effort, and need for recovery. This study was performed in a non-clinical population of 143 employees of a manufacturing company. Part of the employees were exposed to occupational noise and the noise level differed between the employees. The aim was to assess the association between the hearing status, listening effort and need for recovery, as well to examine whether these associations depend on the perceived noise level at the workplace. Hearing status was measured with the Occupational Ear Check, an internet-based hearing-in-noise test. Regression analyses revealed that
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