Developing an Evidence-Based Military Auditory Fitness-for-Duty Standard Based on the 80-Word Modified Rhyme Test

Area of Science:

• Military audiology
• Hearing conservation
• Speech-in-noise testing

Background:

• Military audiology is crucial for evaluating service members' (SMs) hearing loss to ensure deployment readiness.
• Accurate auditory evaluations are vital for SMs operating in demanding environments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish evidence-based auditory fitness-for-duty criteria.
• To utilize speech-in-noise performance on the Modified Rhyme Test (MRT) for these criteria.

Main Methods:

• Recruited approximately 2400 SMs with varying hearing loss levels.
• Administered the Modified Rhyme Test (MRT 80) and operationally-relevant listening tasks.
• Compared test scores to a proposed cutoff criterion for MRT 80 to identify high-risk individuals.

Main Results:

• A cutoff criterion combining MRT 80 scores and 2 kHz better-ear threshold effectively separates listeners.
• Identifies SMs likely to perform well or poorly on operational listening tasks.
• Consistent with military standards and prior simulation studies correlating MRT performance with outcomes.

Conclusions:

• Proposed criteria and new US Army hearing standards offer an effective methodology.
• Identifies SMs with hearing loss at high risk for poor performance on hearing-critical tasks.
• Supports evidence-based auditory fitness-for-duty evaluations in the military.