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Updated: Jun 25, 2026

Behavioral Assessment of Hearing in 2 to 4 Year-old Children: A Two-interval, Observer-based Procedure Using Conditioned Play-based Responses
Published on: January 23, 2017
Hearing threshold comparisons between 2001-02 NHANES and 2003-05 Fort Bliss U.S. Army Service components
Josef A Sobieraj1, Shawn G Gibbs, Heath Steele
1William Beaumont Army Medical Center, Department of Preventive Medicine, 5005 N. Piedras St., El Paso, TX 79920-5001, USA.
Abstract:
This study compares population mean hearing threshold levels in decibels (dB) at 4 kHz among the 2001-02 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) (n=1872) and the 2003-05 Fort Bliss Army Active Duty (AD) (n=9096), National Guard (NG) (n=3842), and Reserve Components (RC) (n=2025) and by gender. Comparisons between male populations show that mean hearing thresholds are not significantly different (p<0.05) between U.S. Army Active Duty males and NHANES males, which differ from a 1984 U.S. Army Active Duty/1971-74 NHANES study showing significantly higher hearing thresholds for the Army Active Duty population. In addition, this study shows that Active Duty males have significantly lower hearing thresholds than National Guard males at ages <40 years old. Female groups generally have significantly lower hearing thresholds than male groups at all ages, but there are not significant differences between female military and civilian populations.

