Does the use of aid in functioning affect the self-assessed functioning?

This paper considers the influence of the use of an aid in functioning on the self-assessment of functioning. Assessments on distance vision, vision up close, hearing and chewing are obtained from four waves of the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Ordered logistic regressions show that people using glasses or contacts tend to give better assessments of their vision than people without the aid. The contrary is found in the self-assessment of hearing and chewing. Individuals that use a hearing aid are more likely to give a bad assessment of hearing than those without the aid. Likewise, people with dentures are more likely to state to have difficulty with chewing than people without dentures.