A short scale for self-assessment of experiences of hearing impairment--the Hearing Coping Assessment (HCA) was developed and administered to 114 consecutive hearing-impaired patients at a Swedish hearing centre. The scale was evaluated in terms of descriptive statistics, reliability, principal components analysis, and validity. The results showed high internal consistency, high split-half correlation, and high item-total correlations. Significant correlations were found between the HCA questionnaire and measures of optimism, depressive syndrome, and audiogram (PTA). The principal component analysis showed two meaningful factors. The first mainly represents disability, and the second emotional reactions due to hearing loss. Aspects of handicap were present in both factors. The subjects in this study were no less optimistic nor did they show more signs of depressive syndrome than comparable norm groups. Still, optimists reported fewer hearing problems as measured by the HCA. The HCA is proposed as a suitable assessment scale in studies on the effects of counselling.