Hearing test study

Hearing aids must be fit individually. A common way to test whether a particular hearing aid is right for a patient is to play a tape on which 25 words are pronounced clearly but at low volume, and ask the patient to repeat the words as heard. Different lists are available that are supposed to be of equal difficulty to understand correctly. However, a major problem for those wearing hearing aids is that the aids amplify background noise as well as the desired sounds.

In this experiment, 24 subjects with normal hearing listened to standard audiology tapes of English words at low volume, with a noisy background. They repeated the words and were scored correct or incorrect in their perception of the words. The order of list presentation was randomized.

Variables.

1. SubjectID: Code for each subject - 24 of them.
2. ListID: Code for each list played.
3. Hearing: Score received on hearing test.

Reference. Loven, Faith. (1981). “A Study of the Interlist Equivalency of the CID W-22 Word List Presented in Quiet and in Noise.” Unpublished MS Thesis, University of Iowa.