Relationships between behavioural and self-report measures in speech recognition in noise

Figures & data

Table 1. Summarising table of the literature review in the introduction incorporating the SSQ.

Authors	Year	n	Measures	Notes	Speech in Noise Measure
Banh, Sing, and Pichora-Fuller	2012	48 young, 48 older	SSQ, PTA, BEA, Words-in-Noise		Yes
Gatehouse and Noble	2004	153 older individuals prior to hearing aid fitting	SSQ, BEA, WEA		No
Demeester et al.	2012	103 younger (18-25) and 24 older (55-65) NH, 109 with HI	SSQ, PTA, LIST	Different lengths of the SSQ. No correlation between subscales and SNR.	Yes
Olsen, Hernvig, and Nielsen	2012	98 USNHL, 89 Young	SSQ, PTA		No
Heo, Lee & Lee	2013	14 Young CI	Sounds and Auditory Speech Recognition, SSQ		No
Akeroyd et al.	2014	1220 split on Uni- and Bilaterally Aided (hearing aid) and Unaided	SSQ, PTA		No
Vansson et al.	2015	49 AHL	SSQ, Dichotic listening		Yes
Tager-Flusberg	2015	19 older CI	SSQ, Word Recognition		Yes
Capretta and Moberly	2016	30 adult CI	QOL, PTA, SSQ, Reading, Phonemic, MMSE		No
Moulin and Richard	2016	100 Young NH, 230 older HIS	SSQ, PTA		No
Ramakers et al.	2017	38 CI (Uni- and Bilateral)	SSQ, U-STARR		Yes
von Gablenz Otto-Sobotka, and Holube	2018	1711 NH split on different age groups	SSQ17, PTA	Sample split on different age groups	No
Heinrich et al.	2019	581, 129, 50 older	SSQ, HERE, PTA	Aimed at developing new instrument. 129 subjects with PTA and 50 with PTA and a SpiN measure.	Yes (n = 50)
Moulin et al.	2019	98 Young NH, 197 HI Subjects, 35 NH, 88 HI	SSQ (full, short forms of different versions)	Aimed at developing short forms of SSQ	No

ENT: ear, nose, and throat; HAU: hearing aid users; USHNL: unilateral sensorineural hearing loss; CI: cochlear implants, AHL: asymmetric hearing loss; NH: normal hearing; HI: hearing impaired; SSQ: Speech, Spatial, and Quality Questionnaire; PTA: pure tone average; BEA: better ear average; WEA: worse ear average; LIST: Leuven Intelligibility Sentence Test; SRT: speech reception threshold; SWIR: sentence-final word identification and recall; IOI-HA: International Outcome Inventory – Hearing Aids; QOL: Quality of Life Questionnaire; MMSE: Mini Mental State Examination; U-STARR: Utrecht Sentence Test with Adaptive Randomised; Roving levels, HERE: hearing in real-life environments.

Table 2. Descriptive statistics of all variables included in the study for the normally hearing and the hearing aid users.

Group	Variable	Mean (SD)	Range
Normal hearing	Speech	7.8 (1.4)	1.6–10
	Spatial	8.1 (1.2)	4.1–10
	Quality	8.6 (1)	4.2–10
	SSQ Total	8.2 (1)	4.0–9.9
	HINT (dB SNR)	−3.1 (0.9)	−5.3 to 0.5
	SSN (dB SNR)^a	−0.8 (1.9)	−5.9 to 8.4
	Four-talker (dB SNR)^a	−6.3 (1.8)	−10.0 to 1.7
	PTA4 (dB HL)	10 (6.1)	−5.0 to 26.2
	Age	61.1 (8.1)	42.0–78
Hearing aid users	Speech	5.7 (1.7)	2.2–9.5
	Spatial	6.7 (1.8)	1.7–9.9
	Quality	7.1 (1.5)	3.5–9.8
	SSQ Total	6.5 (1.5)	3.3–9.7
	HINT (dB SNR)	−1.5 (1.8)	−4.8 to 12
	SSN (dB SNR)	1.5 (2.1)	−2.7 to 7.2
	Four-talker (dB SNR)	−4.1 (2)	−8.8 to 2.4
	PTA4 (dB HL)	37.8 (10.6)	11.2–75
	Age	61.1 (8.4)	33.0–80

^aAre two different background noises in the Hagerman test and aggregated 50% and 80% linear processing conditions.

Figure 1. Audiograms for the older normally hearing adults on the left and the hearing aid users on the right. Error bars depict 95% CI.

Figure 2. The correlation between the HINT and the self-report scores of the Quality subscale of the SSQ.

Figure 3. The correlation between the HINT and the self-report scores of the Speech subscale of the SSQ.

Table 3. Correlations between the subscales of the SSQ, total SSQ score, speech in noise tests, and PTA4.

	Normal hearing							Hearing aid users
	Spatial	Quality	SSQ	HINT	SSN	Four-talker	PTA4	Spatial	Quality	SSQ	HINT	SSN	Four-talker	PTA4
Speech	0.56***	0.62***	0.84***	−0.27***	−0.1	−0.09	−0.11	0.65***	0.75***	0.87***	0.003	−0.14	−0.02	0.003
Spatial	−	0.69***	0.87***	−0.17	−0.07	−0.1	−0.12	−	0.71***	0.9***	0.01	−0.05	0.01	0.09
Quality		–	0.88***	−0.22*	−0.14	−0.2*	−0.21		–	0.91***	−0.03	−0.09	−0.02	−0.01
SSQ Total			–	−0.25***	−0.12	−0.15	−0.17			–	−0.005	−0.1	−0.01	0.04
HINT				–	0.39***	0.44***	0.25**				–	0.48***	0.56***	0.4***
SSN					–	0.71***	0.22*					–	0.73***	0.46***
Four-talker						–	0.31***							0.36***

* = p < .05, ** = p < .001, *** p < .0001.

Table 4. Correlations between speech in noise tests and the items in the Speech subscale of the SSQ.

	Normal hearing			Hearing aid users
Speech	HINT	FourTalker	SSN	HINT	FourTalker	SSN
Item 1	−0.17	−0.03	−0.04	−0.1	−0.06	−0.14
Item 2	−0.11	−0.07	−0.03	−0.02	−0.05	−0.06
Item 3	−0.3***	−0.16	−0.11	−0.1	−0.15	−0.18
Item 4	−0.28***	−0.1	−0.14	−0.05	−0.05	−0.1
Item 5	−0.28***	−0.1	−0.08	−0.02	−0.01	−0.13
Item 6	−0.22	−0.07	−0.13	−0.08	−0.05	−0.07
Item 7	−0.26*	−0.14	−0.1	−0.11	−0.09	−0.15
Item 8	−0.16	−0.03	−0.07	−0.06	−0.03	−0.1
Item 9	−0.1	0	−0.05	−0.02	0.03	−0.07
Item 10	−0.14	−0.05	−0.04	−0.07	−0.03	−0.03
Item 11	−0.19	−0.07	−0.07	0.01	−0.01	−0.11
Item 12	−0.28***	−0.09	−0.08	0	0.01	−0.06
Item 13	−0.13	−0.01	−0.03	0.04	−0.01	−0.04
Item 14	−0.09	−0.02	−0.02	0.02	0	−0.04

* = p < .05, ** = p < .001, *** p < .0001. Normally hearing (on the left) and hearing aid users (on the right).