Optimizing assistive headphones for severe hearing impairment: A fuzzy AHP–PSO and COCOSO–game approach

Severe hearing impairment profoundly affects quality of life, necessitating advanced auditory assistive technologies. This study evaluates contemporary headphones and assistive listening equipment for individuals with profound hearing loss using a novel multi-method decision-making framework. The framework integrates the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (Fuzzy AHP) with Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) to derive and optimize the weights of 20 evaluation criteria, followed by the Fuzzy Combinative Distance-based Assessment (COCOSO) and Fuzzy Zero-Sum Game to rank 10 headphone models. Furthermore, fuzzy COCOSO is used in the SWOT analysis to rank strategic factors. It has the following benefits: it accommodates expert judgment uncertainty, effectively balances compromise and aggregation strategies, and provides strong, comprehensible rankings that support the development of a subsequent TOWS-based strategy. The results reveal that speech clarity, sound amplification, and noise cancelation are the most influential criteria, with the Bose SoundControl Hearing Aids, Phonak Roger On, and BeHear NOW Personal Amplifier identified as top-performing models. The combined SO1, SO2, ST1, and ST2 strategies—emphasizing superior sound quality alongside cost efficiency—emerge as the most effective. Overall, the proposed framework contributes a dependable and flexible decision-support tool that links technological evaluation with strategic planning, advancing the development of tailored auditory solutions and improving market competitiveness in the hearing-assistive technology sector.