Comparison of ascending and bracketing methods in pure tone audiometry. A multi-laboratory study.
Four laboratories participated in this study to compare ascending and bracketing methods in manual determination of hearing thresholds using attenuators with 5 dB step. In all, 214 ears were measured. No significant difference was found between mean thresholds obtained with the two methods in the frequency range 0.5--6 kHz; the four-laboratory, six-frequency grand mean difference was -0.31 dB. The variability among subjects also remained essentially the same for the two methods. However, the bracketing method required a significantly longer test time than the ascending method.
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001299:Audiometry / Q000379:methods*; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone / Q000379:methods*; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged