![Sample our Health and Social Care journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5938/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Health-Social-Care.jpg"})
Abstract
Objective: To provide guidelines for the development of two types of closed-set speech-perception tests that can be applied and interpreted in the same way across languages. The guidelines cover the digit triplet and the matrix sentence tests that are most commonly used to test speech recognition in noise. They were developed by a working group on Multilingual Speech Tests of the International Collegium of Rehabilitative Audiology (ICRA). Design: The recommendations are based on reviews of existing evaluations of the digit triplet and matrix tests as well as on the research experience of members of the ICRA Working Group. They represent the results of a consensus process. Results: The resulting recommendations deal with: Test design and word selection; Talker characteristics; Audio recording and stimulus preparation; Masking noise; Test administration; and Test validation. Conclusions: By following these guidelines for the development of any new test of this kind, clinicians and researchers working in any language will be able to perform tests whose results can be compared and combined in cross-language studies.
Acknowledgements
The work reviewed here has been supported by numerous projects (i.e. HearCom, HurDig, Hearing4all, and others) and funding institutions (EU, DFG, NIH/NIDCD and others) and has involved many individuals, including Sabine Hochmuth, Sofie Jansen, Heleen Luts, Astrid van Wieringen, Kirsten Wagener, Anna Warzybok, and Melanie Zokoll to whom the ICRA Working Group is particularly grateful. The copyrights of the tests we have developed are owned by the non-profit organization HörTech gGmbH (majority owned by Universität Oldenburg) as well as by the universities of Southampton, Leuven, Rotterdam, Linkoping, Free University Amsterdam, Academic Medical Centre Amsterdam, Karolinska Institute Stockholm, Sør-Trøndelag University College Norway, and other universities from the HearCom consortium. An increasing number of tests are also available commercially, e.g. as a medical product for modern audiometers. For research purposes, sample sentences and free trial versions of the research version of the software are also available from the copyright owners.
This set of recommendations will be made available to the scientific community via the ICRA website www.icra.nu, in conjunction with the up-to-date list of language-specific tests that fulfill the recommendations as well as the appropriate references.
Declaration of interest: Wouter Dreschler, Birger Kollmeier, Mark Lutman, and Jan Wouters are affiliated with public or non-profit institutions that own copyrights of the tests. Besides this, the authors declare no conflict of interest.