User-operated audiometry – an evaluation of expert vs. non-expert headphone placement

Abstract

Objective

User-operated audiometry faces multiple barriers. One of these is the concern of audiologists that patients (non-experts) placing headphones by themselves results in invalid hearing thresholds due to greater placement variability.

Design

Comparative study. Participants took the AMTAS pure-tone air-conduction audiometry under two different conditions, expert and non-expert circumaural headphone placement for five frequencies within the range 250–8000 Hz. Questionnaires were also used to gain insight into the usability of the user-operated audiometry system – as well as the participants’ perceived handling of the audiometry headphones.

Study sample

Thirty participants (mean age 67.5 years).

Results

No statistically significant mean differences in hearing thresholds between the expert and non-expert conditions were found. The mean system usability scale score was 84.5. Handling the headphones was also rated as being easy (30%) or very easy (60%) by most non-experts.

Conclusion

The conclusion of the study is that non-experts can be trusted to properly equip a pair of circumaural audiometry headphones for the correct conduction of pure-tone audiometry with only a few digital instructions.

Keywords:

• Audiometry
• user-operated
• user-placement
• patient-placement
• headphones

Acknowledgements

Carsten Daugaard of Force Technology (Odense) provided knowledge, equipment, and environment for calibration of the iPad that was used to take background noise measurements. Louise Thygesen Schmidt created and conducted the interviews with audiologists and patients whose results in large parts motivated the creation of this study. Data storage was facilitated through OPEN, Open Patient data Explorative Network, Odense University Hospital, Region of Southern Denmark, which provided a REDCap solution with secure servers for GDPR-compliant data storage.

Ethical approval

The necessity for approval by the ethical committee was waived by the Research Ethics Committee of the University of Southern Denmark.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that there are no competing interests.

Data availability statement

Data is not readily available for sharing due to privacy laws.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Innovation Fund Denmark Grand Solutions 9090-00089B and the William Demant Foundation case number 19-1251.