Test Retest Reliability Of Speech Recognition Threshold Material In Individuals With A Wide Range Of Hearing Abilities

The purpose of this study was to evaluate an updated list of digitally recorded Speech Recognition Threshold (SRT) materials for test-retest reliability. Chipman (2003) identified 33 psychometrically equated spondaic words that are frequently occurring in English today. These digitally recorded words were used to determine the SRT of 40 participants using the American Speech-Language Hearing Association guidelines. The participants were between the ages of 19 and 83 years and presented with hearing impairment ranging from normal to severe. The individual's pure-tone averages classified 16 participants with normal hearing to slight loss, 12 participants with mild loss, and 12 participants with moderate to severe hearing loss. The speech materials were presented to participants in one randomly selected ear. The SRT was measured for the same ear in both the test and retest conditions. The average SRT for the test condition was 22.7 dB HL and 22.8 dB HL in the retest condition with an improvement of 0.1 dB for retest but no significant difference was identified. Using a modified variance equation to determine test-retest reliability resulted in a 0.98, indicating almost perfect reliability. Therefore the test-retest reliability was determined to be exceptional for the new SRT words.