Re: [AUDITORY] Setting Priorities in Hearing Research: last chance to have your say

Dear Alain,

Thank you so much for your thoughtful comments. I have a few responses, but I want to emphasize that these are my own perspective and I'm not speaking for the group.

First of all, I want to emphasize that this current phase, the ranking, is a follow-up to the previous phase, which was the definition of the priorities. The whole process is described on the web page https://acoustics.ac.uk/international-priorities-in-hearing-survey/, but the short version is that we first sent out a wide request for input and got detailed descriptions of multiple priority areas from over 60 content experts, resulting in over 15,000 words! We then went through using thematic analysis, and derived 36 distinct priorities. These range from more precise and technical, to more abstract, wide-ranging or conceptual. We captured each with a brief "slogan", but each of these has a full detailed description associated with it. To see these we encourage you to follow the links in the actual survey, two of which I have copied here.

To download the Word document with the full summaries, use this link: https://aruspsych.eu.qualtrics.com/CP/File.php?F=F_a44G01kyveA99Ou

To view the YouTube videos that we recorded with each of the summaries, use this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A368MBAcF4Q

Given that choices need to get made, not just by funders, but by societies, research centers, universities, and even individual laboratories, I think it is very important that we as a field have ongoing conversations about what the priority areas are.

I personally learned a huge amount by reading the careful and thoughtful responses that came out of the first priority identification phase. We very much want the ranking phase to be an educational phase as well, by sharing the distillation of those 15,000 words that the auditory community wrote for us. We look forward to publishing a carefully crafted articulation of what our experts told us they think is important for the field to focus on in the future.

In theory, we could have stopped there, but it seems useful to know what the broader community thinks about these priority areas. The ranking is indeed a "one-dimensional" response mode, but it is the best way we know of to get input from a large and diverse group of scholars, clinicians, students, and interested stakeholders.

We sincerely hope you will take this opportunity to learn what the expert group identified as the top 36 priority areas, and to lend your voice in saying which of these speak to you most clearly.

Again, the survey (and the descriptions of the 36 priority areas) can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/hearingranking We strongly recommend using a computer, as the click and drag interface is a bit difficult to get the hang of on a phone or tablet.

Thanks again for your thoughtful commentary!

Erick

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Frederick (Erick) Gallun, PhD, FASA, FASHA | he/him/his

Professor, Oregon Hearing Research Center, Oregon Health & Science University

"Diversity is like being invited to a party, Inclusion is being asked to dance, and Belonging is dancing like no one’s watching" - Gregory Lewis

On Sat, Dec 14, 2024 at 4:13 AM Alain de Cheveigne <alain.de.cheveigne@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi Erick, all,

Thanks for this effort! It's great to have a wide picture of what people in the field find of interest.

However there's one point that troubles me: ranking. I fear that it might have unintended effects. I'll try to explain why.

The projects that we could be working on are many, and measures of how interesting/useful they are form a high dimensional space. Deciding to fund proposal A rather than proposal B involves projecting these measures on a single axis, i.e. choosing a particular weight for each measure. This is hard and requires expertise, which funding panels often lack.

It is tempting to replace this messy business by a simple, one-dimensional topic-dependent measure, or at least use it for triage, or to justify a decision. The measure is 'validated' (via this survey) so a decision based on it is hard to question. Conversely, a panel might think twice before giving money to, say, synaptopathy, or genetics, as the decision might be challenged based on their rank. Busy, pragmatic panel members might not want to take chances. As a side effect, researchers may feel pressure to drop low-priority research (regardless of its promise) or 'talk up' aspects to make it look high-priority. None of this seems good to me.

Looking at the current ranking, the oecumenical 'auditory perception' comes top, which is no surprise given that it's what most of us are working on. 'Better outcomes', 'better hearing aids', 'better speech comprehension', etc. are hard to disagree with, and their high rank is thus not super informative. Same for the low ranks of e.g. 'operational issues' or 'tradition or orthodoxy' (whatever that means). Low ranks of 'genetics' and 'synaptopathy' are more surprising, thus informative if they can be trusted. However that requires ruling out bias or random effects due to the relatively small number of respondants. Not easy...

My gut feeling is good research can be done on any of these topics (and poor research too). Synaptopathy is not my field, nor apparently a priority for many, but I see how it feeds into many other aspects of hearing. A high-quality project might lead to a breakthrough with high impact on, say, 'better outcomes', possibly higher than a project that more tamely targets 'better outcomes'.

So, this initiative is great to give us a panorama of all the good things people see as interesting. Personally, I would downplay its role as a tool to guide funding decisions.

Alain

> On 14 Dec 2024, at 00:40, Frederick Gallun <fgallun@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> Dear Auditory Community Members,
> We are in the final month of asking what YOU want to see prioritized in Auditory Research!
> Have you told us what you think is most important to put our resources to for the field to advance in the coming years?
> You may remember that we collected your feedback on what you think research priorities should be and what current obstacles to advancement are and based on this developed 36 priority areas. If you want to know how we came up with the top 36 priority areas as well as how folks have ranked them so far (and ask yourself if you agree??), check out our website: https://acoustics.ac.uk/international-priorities-in-hearing-survey/.
>
> If you want to contribute to this priority ranking exercise and make sure that your voice is heard, please click here to go straight to the survey: https://tinyurl.com/hearingranking We strongly recommend using a computer, as the click and drag interface is a bit difficult to get the hang of on a phone or tablet.
> Why is it so important for YOU to fill out the survey?
> 1. We aim to make these priorities accessible to everyone by publishing the results in a peer-reviewed open-access format, which we feel would benefit many in the field when talking with funders / policy makers / commissioners.
> 2. In order to represent the international hearing research community best we need the priority list to be as representative of the international auditory research landscape as possible and would like to encourage researchers from all continents to take part.
> 3. The voting ends on December 31st, 2024!
> Thank you, and please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or have any difficulties with the survey.
>
> Erick Gallun (gallunf@xxxxxxxx)
> on behalf of:
>
> Rob MacKinnon (robert.mackinnon@xxxxxxxxx)
> Antje Heinrich (antje.heinrich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
> Chris Sumner (christian.sumner@xxxxxxxxx)
>
> Members of the UKAN Hearing SIG Committee
> https://acoustics.ac.uk/sigs/hearing-acoustics/
>