Publication Date

1979

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Aldrich, William M., 1941-

Degree Name

M.A. (Master of Arts)

Legacy Department

Department of Communication Disorders

LCSH

Hearing aids; Audiometry

Abstract

Many different procedures are presently used for hearing-aid selection. Carhart proposed one such procedure in 1946 and modifications of this procedure are presently used in many clinics. This procedure involves a comparison of speech reception threshold, speech intelligibility, and threshold of discomfort. In 1976 Jerger and Hayes developed a different procedure that used synthetic sentence material with various message- to-competition ratios. Because these two procedures are used for the same purpose, this study was conducted to determine whether the two procedures produce the same results and recommendations. Ten subjects were evaluated. All subjects had been referred for a hearing-aid evaluation or previously had been given such an evaluation. For each subject three conditions of amplification were selected. Both the traditional procedure and the Jerger and Hayes procedure were used to evaluate each of these aided conditions. The recommendations obtained from each procedure were then compared. These two procedures yielded different recommendations in 90% of the subjects. In 80% both procedures did recommend a hearing aid. However, in only one case was the same aided condition recommended. The subject's aid of preference agreed with the recommendation of the SSI procedure in 70% of the cases; it agreed with the recommendation of the traditional procedure in 20% of the cases. The results of this study indicate that these two procedures do not necessarily produce the same results or make the same recommendations. It appears that the recommendations produced may depend on which evaluative procedure is used. In addition the results of this study suggest that neither of these two procedures by itself is sufficient for use with all cases.

Comments

Includes bibliographical references.||Includes illustrations.

Extent

54 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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