An Audiometer to Monitor Progressive Hearing Change in School-aged Children:

ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to develop a cost-effective and easy to use audiometer to monitor progressive hearing change in school-aged children.DesignThe hardware of the audiometer developed included a computer, an external sound blaster and a headphone The hearing screening software was developed to control the pure tone sound level with modulability in the range of 0-45 dB HL at 1, 2, 4 and 0.5 kHz frequencies. Thirty sixth-grade children, aged 12-13 years old, were randomly divided into two groups for a hearing test in a conference room. Testing for one group was performed by a person with experience and the other group was examined by a graduate student who was not familiar with the device. After the hearing test, all children were immediately screened using a clinical diagnostic audiometer in a soundproof room by an audiologist.ResultsMost of the threshold dB values obtained by the audiometer in a conference room (55 ears, 93.2%) were significantly greater than those obtained by the clini...