The Deaf Experience, Deaf Expression (DXDX) project is a large-scale research study that was launched to serve members of our community. Our purpose is to gather interviews documenting real-life experiences from deaf people across the lifespan. We aim to create a database for newly diagnosed individuals, parents, friends, and professionals to use as a community resource. This collection will serve as a convenient guide to support deaf people and their family members through major life decisions.

In this presentation, we will focus on the thematic analysis we have been conducting to determine what factors contribute to decisions on an individual's preferred mode of hearing technology. Thematic analysis is a method that has allowed us to organize and analyze the data we have collected across interviews with different participants. Using a qualitative inquiry approach, we have identified twenty-seven different recurring themes across our participants. Themes were pinpointed based on direct quotes from our participants. Some of these themes include communication barriers, family support, acceptance, social interactions, and hearing technology experiences.

Through this investigation, we recognized that the data we have collected thus far aligns with the five domains of the social determinants of health: economic stability, education access and quality, healthcare access and quality, neighborhood and built environment, and social community context. Our data set falls into each one of these domains. In this presentation, we will explore how the social determinants of health relate to the direct quotes from our participants.