Development and evaluation of the British English coordinate response measure speech-in-noise test as an occupational hearing assessment tool.

Objective: The studies described in this article outline the design and development of a British English version of the coordinate response measure (CRM) speech-in-noise (SiN) test. Our interest in the CRM is as a SiN test with high face validity for occupational auditory fitness for duty (AFFD) assessment.

Design: Study 1 used the method of constant stimuli to measure and adjust the psychometric functions of each target word, producing a speech corpus with equal intelligibility.

Fit for the frontline? identification of mission-critical auditory tasks (MCATs) carried out by infantry and combat-support personnel.

The ability to listen to commands in noisy environments and understand acoustic signals, while maintaining situational awareness, is an important skill for military personnel and can be critical for mission success. Seventeen auditory tasks carried out by British infantry and combat-support personnel were identified through a series of focus groups conducted by Bevis et al. For military personnel, these auditory tasks are termed mission-critical auditory tasks (MCATs) if they are carried in out in a military-specific environment and have a negative consequence when performed below a specified level.

Fit for the frontline? A focus group exploration of auditory tasks carried out by infantry and combat support personnel.

In order to preserve their operational effectiveness and ultimately their survival, military personnel must be able to detect important acoustic signals and maintain situational awareness. The possession of sufficient hearing ability to perform job-specific auditory tasks is defined as auditory fitness for duty (AFFD). Pure tone audiometry (PTA) is used to assess AFFD in the UK military; however, it is unclear whether PTA is able to accurately predict performance on job-specific auditory tasks.