The development and cross-validation of a self-report inventory to assess pure-tone threshold hearing sensitivity.
Previous attempts to assess hearing loss by means of self-report survey items have shown only low to moderate correlations with actual audiometric measures, probably because these attempts used items with high face validity rather than laboratory-tested validity. Beginning with a pool of 108 items used with 384 individuals, we developed a self-report inventory (see Appendix) suitable for group testing or survey administration, which appears to have high correlation with pure-tone hearing thresholds. The inventory was then cross-validated against laboratory audiometric measures in a separate sample of 422 subjects. The resulting 12-item Hearing Screening Inventory (HSI) was shown to be reliable with an internal consistency coefficient (alpha) of 0.89 and test-retest stability coefficient of 0.88. The correlation between pure-tone hearing thresholds in the better ear and the HSI scores for the combined samples was r = 0.81. The correct classification rate for the HSI was 92.1% for a low fence of 25-dB hearing level and 93.4% for a high fence of 55-dB hearing level. A conversion equation with estimated variability is also provided for point estimates of pure-tone hearing thresholds from the HSI scores. A copy of the inventory and scoring procedure is appended to this report.
Coren
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Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Hakstian
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D000328:Adult; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001307:Auditory Perception; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D005260:Female; D006311:Hearing Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards