Developing, implementing, and evaluating a hearing screening programme in the speech-language pathology clinic setting

Abstract

Conducting hearing screening is one of the many important functions of the speech-language pathologist. Often, inadequate consideration is given to the acoustic environment in which screening is conducted and the impact of this environment upon results. This study examines the establishment of a hearing screening protocol at the University of Canterbury. Two phases of this study are reported: (a) an evaluation of the proposed screening environment and the development of screening protocols and (b) the screening of 586 participants over a 2-year period and validation of 120 participants by an audiologist. Initial results indicated that ambient noise levels in each speech-language pathology clinic room exceeded American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) (1985) criteria at 500 Hz, necessitating an increase in testing level from 20 dB HL to 25 dB HL at this frequency. Screening data indicated that 80.5% of participants passed the test screening battery. Sensitivity and specificity were 73.1 and 91.2%...