We present a study of changes in the defect density of states in hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) due to high-energy electron irradiation using charged deep-level transient spectroscopy. It was found that defect states near the conduction band were removed, while in other band gap regions the defect-state density increased. A similar trend is observed for a-Si:H which has been subjected to light soaking, but in that case the majority of defect states are created around midgap, whereas with electron-beam degradation more defect states are created near the valence-band tail.