Abstract
Objective: Less than 15% of adults in the USA over age 70 receive hearing screening; less than 20% of adults with hearing loss receive any form of treatment. Reasons vary, but affordability and accessibility are major barriers to intervention and treatment. This study provides data supporting a new adult hearing screening measure (NSRT) that is self-administered, easy to use and focused on difficulties experienced in everyday speech communication. Methods: The NSRT test materials are sentence-length utterances containing phonetic contrasts. The test requires respondents to determine whether sentences printed on a computer monitor are the same/different from sentences delivered as auditory stimuli through the computer sound card. The test is administered in quiet and +5 dB SNR background noise. Study participants were 120 adults aged 18 - 88 years. Results: Data obtained from the NSRT testing experience are used to construct a pseudo audiogram. When the predicted hearing thresholds were compared with conventional, clinical puretone measures, the sensitivity and specificity of the NSRT screening measure were 95% and 87%, respectively; diagnostic accuracy was 91%. Conclusions: The NSRT can identify individuals with hearing loss through a simple screening process grounded in standards set by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. The NSRT is suitable for administration in clinical and nonclinical settings.
Highlights
Automated technologies and methods have become commonplace for hearing screening in adults, especially outside of North America [1]
The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association or ASHA [21] guidelines for hearing screening in adults stipulate that the stimulus materials consist of pure-tones at 1, 2 and 4 kHz presented at 25 dB HL
In the United States and Canada, the ASHA criteria for hearing screening are widely accepted as the gold standard
Summary
Automated technologies and methods have become commonplace for hearing screening in adults, especially outside of North America [1]. H. Bochner 716 able online and may be considered a low-tech approach to hearing screening. High-tech approaches to hearing screening generally involve self-administered tests with stimuli presented under variable and uncontrolled listening conditions, and include screening with the use of land-line and cellular telephones, the internet, and hand-held consumer-electronic devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Software applications have been developed for screening with the use of pure-tones, but results have proven problematic [3] [4] [5] [6] [7], and the calibration of devices and earphones remains a formidable challenge even for the most promising automated tests [8] [9]. Progress is being made in addressing the calibration problem [10]
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