Headphone listening habits and hearing thresholds in swedish adolescents.

INTRODUCTION: The aim of this study was to investigate self-reported hearing and portable music listening habits, measured hearing function and music exposure levels in Swedish adolescents. The study was divided into two parts. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The first part included 280 adolescents, who were 17 years of age and focused on self-reported data on subjective hearing problems and listening habits regarding portable music players. From this group, 50 adolescents volunteered to participate in Part II of the study, which focused on audiological measurements and measured listening volume. RESULTS: The results indicated that longer lifetime exposure in years and increased listening frequency were associated with poorer hearing thresholds and more self-reported hearing problems. A tendency was found for listening to louder volumes and poorer hearing thresholds. Women reported more subjective hearing problems compared with men but exhibited better hearing thresholds. In contrast, men reported more use of personal music devices, and they listen at higher volumes. DISCUSSION: Additionally, the study shows that adolescents listening for ≥3 h at every occasion more likely had tinnitus. Those listening at ≥85 dB LAeq, FF and listening every day exhibited poorer mean hearing thresholds, reported more subjective hearing problems and listened more frequently in school and while sleeping. CONCLUSION: Although the vast majority listened at moderate sound levels and for shorter periods of time, the study also indicates that there is a subgroup (10%) that listens between 90 and 100 dB for longer periods of time, even during sleep. This group might be at risk for developing future noise-induced hearing impairments.

Hearing thresholds, tinnitus, and headphone listening habits in nine-year-old children.

OBJECTIVE: Investigate hearing function and headphone listening habits in nine-year-old Swedish children. DESIGN: A cross-sectional study was conducted and included otoscopy, tympanometry, pure-tone audiometry, and spontaneous otoacoustic emissions (SOAE). A questionnaire was used to evaluate headphone listening habits, tinnitus, and hyperacusis. STUDY SAMPLE: A total of 415 children aged nine years. RESULTS: The prevalence of a hearing threshold ≥20 dB HL at one or several frequencies was 53%, and the hearing thresholds at 6 and 8 kHz were higher than those at the low and mid frequencies. SOAEs were observed in 35% of the children, and the prevalence of tinnitus was 5.3%. No significant relationship between SOAE and tinnitus was found. Pure-tone audiometry showed poorer hearing thresholds in children with tinnitus and in children who regularly listened with headphones. CONCLUSION: The present study of hearing, listening habits, and tinnitus in nine-year old children is, to our knowledge, the largest study so far. The main findings were that hearing thresholds in the right ear were poorer in children who used headphones than in children not using them, which could be interpreted as headphone listening may have negative consequences to children's hearing. Children with tinnitus showed poorer hearing thresholds compared to children without tinnitus.

Comparison of predictive measures of speech recognition after noise reduction processing.

A number of measures were evaluated with regard to their ability to predict the speech-recognition benefit of single-channel noise reduction (NR) processing. Three NR algorithms and a reference condition were used in the evaluation. Twenty listeners with impaired hearing and ten listeners with normal hearing participated in a blinded laboratory study. An adaptive speech test was used. The speech test produces results in terms of signal-to-noise ratios that correspond to equal speech recognition performance (in this case 80% correct) with and without the NR algorithms. This facilitates a direct comparison between predicted and experimentally measured effects of noise reduction algorithms on speech recognition. The experimental results were used to evaluate nine different predictive measures, one in two variants. The best predictions were found with the Coherence Speech Intelligibility Index (CSII) [Kates and Arehart (2005), J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 117(4), 2224-2237]. In general, measures using correlation between the clean speech and the processed noisy speech, as well as other measures that are based on short-time analysis of speech and noise, seemed most promising.

Psychosocial work environment among Swedish audiologists.

OBJECTIVE: The study examined the self-reported psychosocial work environment for audiologists working in three practice types (public, completely private, and private but publicly funded). DESIGN: A cross-sectional e-mail survey using the demand-control-support questionnaire, a short version of the effort-reward imbalance (ERI) questionnaire, and descriptive data. STUDY SAMPLE: Five-hundred Swedish licensed audiologists. RESULTS: Overall, the results indicate differences in psychosocial work environment pertaining to the practice types. These differences are small and the type explains few percent of the variability accounted in the measures of psychosocial work environment. Social support seems important for the psychosocial work environment and is considered a reward in itself. Using the demand-control model, 29% of the audiologists reported working in a high-stress psychosocial work environment. Using the ERI-ratio to estimate the imbalance between effort and reward it was shown that that 86% of the participants experienced an unfavorable work situation where the rewards do not correspond to the efforts made. CONCLUSIONS: The organizational framework has minor effect on self-reported psychosocial work environment for Swedish licensed audiologists. The percentage of unfavorable ERI-ratios seen in Swedish audiologists seems conspicuously high compared to other working populations in general, but also compared to other health service workers.