The initial part of a hearing-aid fitting is typically performed using a prescriptive approach. Calculations that apply this approach may be performed based on a number of parameters: hearing threshold levels, prior experience with hearing aids, personal sound preferences, age, gender or types of listening situations that occur in a listener's everyday life.
Calculations could also be targeted at a certain type of hearing loss or take different aspects of hearing loss into consideration. These factors may all be used to derive hearing-aid settings that are appropriate for hearing-aid end-users.
ORCA Europe has performed several studies addressing hearing-aid prescriptions that verify existing prescriptions and examine variations in prescriptions for selected groups of hearing aid users. Recently, there has been an increased interest in investigating different dimensions of fitting success.