Application of HHIE-S(Hearing Handicap Inventory for the Elderly-Screening version) to screening test of noise-induced hearing loss

Lee, Mi Young; Suh, Suk Kwon; Lee, Choong Won

Abstract

The study conducted from May to September in 1994 to investigate applicability of the Hearing Handicap Inventory for the Elderly-Screening version(HHIE-S) in parallel with the puretone audiometer to the initial screening test of noise-induced hearing loss(NIHL) in some noise-exposed workers. Subjects were selected by systemic sampling that took every fifth person from 6,700 workers taking the annual occupational health examination by the department of Health Maintenance of Dongsan Hospital Keimyung University in Taegu. The authors administered the pure-tone audiometric test and self-reported questionnaire of HHIE-S including items of sociodemographic and job-related variables concurrently. The final subjects analysed were 1,019(488 males and 531 females) excluding fourteen persons who had many missing values in their questionnaires. The reliability coefficients of HHIE-S scale by Cronbach's alpha were 0.84. In the univariate analysis of hearing handicap measured by the HHIE-S, work duration, military service and the hearing threshold loss at 1kHz and 4kHz was the only selected variable explaining the hearing handicap in males and hearing threshold loss at 1kHz and 4kHz, age, and work duration were selected in females. In ROC curves for HHIE-S scores against NIHL as gold standard which was defined by the follow-up audiogram as more than 30dB of the average of 0.5/1/2kHz and 50dB at 4kHz, the optimal cutoff for the parallel HHIE-S appeared to be 8. The results suggest that HHIE-S appeared to have some reliability and validity in this data and might be used in screening NIHL in parallel with pure-tone audiometer in noise-exposed workers.