title: Comparison of the South African Spondaic and CID W-1 wordlists for measuring speech recognition threshold.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The home language of most audiologists in South Africa is either English or Afrikaans, whereas most South Africans speak an African language as their home language. The use of an English wordlist, the South African Spondaic (SAS) wordlist, which is familiar to the English Second Language (ESL) population, was developed by the author for testing the speech recognition threshold (SRT) of ESL speakers.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The aim of this study was to compare the pure-tone average (PTA)/SRT correlation results of ESL participants when using the SAS wordlist (list A) and the CID W-1 spondaic wordlist (list B - less familiar; list C - more familiar CID W-1 words).
  
  
  METHODS
  A mixed-group correlational, quantitative design was adopted. PTA and SRT measurements were compared for lists A, B and C for 101 (197 ears) ESL participants with normal hearing or a minimal hearing loss (<26 dBHL; mean age 33.3).
  
  
  RESULTS
  The Pearson correlation analysis revealed a strong PTA/SRT correlation when using list A (right 0.65; left 0.58) and list C (right 0.63; left 0.56). The use of list B revealed weak correlations (right 0.30; left 0.32). Paired sample t-tests indicated a statistically significantly stronger PTA/SRT correlation when list A was used, rather than list B or list C, at a 95% level of confidence.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The use of the SAS wordlist yielded a stronger PTA/SRT correlation than the use of the CID W-1 wordlist, when performing SRT testing on South African ESL speakers with normal hearing, or minimal hearing loss (<26 dBHL).
authors: Department of Speech-Pathology and Audiology, University of Pretoria. hanekomtanya@gmail.com.
authors: Tanya
authors: T
authors: Hanekom
authors: Maggi
authors: M
authors: Soer
authors: Lidia
authors: L
authors: Pottas
mesh_terms: D000158:Acoustic Impedance Tests; D000328:Adult; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D005260:Female; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000175:diagnosis; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D019303:Multilingualism; D010700:Phonetics; D012660:Semantics; D013019:South Africa; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013069:Speech Reception Threshold Test; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D055815:Young Adult