Development of hearing standards for Ontario’s Constable Selection System

Abstract

Objective: Develop valid and defensible hearing standards for Ontario constables to ensure safe and efficient operations.

Design: Research involved three steps: (1) identification of hearing critical (HC) tasks, (2) characterisation of real-world noise environments where these tasks are performed (3) and establishment of screening criteria and protocols for determining fitness for duty.

Study sample: Three panels of subject matter experts (SMEs) from different Ontario police services participated in Steps 1 and 3.

Result: Fifty-one HC tasks conducted in 25 different environments were identified. Acceptable levels of speech communication in noise were based on environments with the highest frequency, importance and difficulty ratings. The ability to understand soft speech was also deemed critical. These translated into a 2 dB maximum elevation in the Noise Composite speech recognition threshold (SRT) with the Hearing-In-Noise-Test and a threshold in quiet of 35 dBA or better.

Conclusions: Speech communication modelling methodology greatly facilitates the task of developing fitness for duty hearing standards, but participation of SMEs is crucial for face validity.

Keywords:

• Auditory fitness for duty
• occupational hearing screening
• speech recognition
• noise

Disclosure statement

All authors contributed to the development of the Hearing-In-Noise Test (HINT) software and related publications. Two of the coauthors (CL and SDS), have served as experts in legal proceedings that involved occupational hearing screening.

Additional information

Funding

Work based on data collected under contract OSS_00219841 with the Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services.