Agreement between audiometric hearing loss and self-reported hearing difficulty on the Revised Hearing Handicap
Lauren K Dillard1, Lois J Matthews2, Judy R Dubno2
1Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, USA dillalau@musc.edu.
Background:
New standardised measures of self-reported hearing difficulty can be validated against audiometric hearing loss. This study reports the influence of demographic factors (age, sex, race and socioeconomic position (SEP)) on the agreement between audiometric hearing loss and self-reported hearing difficulty.
Methods:
Participants were 1558 adults (56.9% female; 20.0% racial minority; mean age 63.7 (SD 14.1) years) from the Medical University of South Carolina Longitudinal Cohort Study of Age-Related Hearing Loss (1988-current). Audiometric hearing loss was defined as the average of pure-tone thresholds at frequencies 0.5, 1.0, 2.0 and 4.0 kHz >25 dB HL in the worse ear. Self-reported hearing difficulty was defined as ≥6 points on the Revised Hearing Handicap Inventory (RHHI) or RHHI screening version (RHHI-S). We report agreement between audiometric hearing loss and the RHHI(-S), defined by sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and observed minus predicted prevalence. Estimates were stratified to age group, sex, race and SEP proxy.
Results:
The prevalence of audiometric hearing loss and self-reported hearing difficulty were 49.0% and 48.8%, respectively. Accuracy was highest among participants aged <60 (77.6%) versus 60-70 (71.4%) and 70+ (71.9%) years, for white (74.6%) versus minority (68.0%) participants and was similar by sex and SEP proxy. Generally, agreement of audiometric hearing loss and RHHI(-S) self-reported hearing difficulty differed by age, sex and race.
Conclusions:
Relationships of audiometric hearing loss and self-reported hearing difficulty vary by demographic factors. These relationships were similar for the full (RHHI) and screening (RHHI-S) versions of this tool.
Related Concept Videos
Self-Discrepancy Theory
Factors Affecting Perception
An illustrative example of a perceptual set is the scenario where an airline pilot told...
Bias in Epidemiological Studies
Perception of Sound Waves
The pitch of a sound depends on the frequency and the pressure amplitude of the source. Two sounds of the same...
Confounding in Epidemiological Studies


