Evidence-based occupational hearing screening II: validation of a screening methodology using measures of functional hearing ability.

Objective: Validate use of the Extended Speech Intelligibility Index (ESII) for prediction of speech intelligibility in non-stationary real-world noise environments. Define a means of using these predictions for objective occupational hearing screening for hearing-critical public safety and law enforcement jobs.

Design: Analyses of predicted and measured speech intelligibility in recordings of real-world noise environments were performed in two studies using speech recognition thresholds (SRTs) and intelligibility measures.

Effects of headset, flight workload, hearing ability, and communications message quality on pilot performance.

Objective: This study was designed to determine the effects of hearing loss, aviation headset type, flight workload complexity, and communication signal quality on pilots' performance in an army rotary-wing flight simulator.

Background: To maintain flight status, army aviators who do not meet current audiometric standards require a hearing loss waiver, which is based on speech intelligibility in quiet conditions. Because hearing loss characteristics of hearing-impaired aviators can vary greatly, and because performance is likely also influenced by degree of flight workload and communication demand, it was expected that performance among hearing-impaired aviators would also vary.

In-flight speech intelligibility evaluation of a service member with sensorineural hearing loss: case report.

This case report describes the in-flight speech intelligibility evaluation of an aircraft crewmember with pure tone audiometric thresholds that exceed the U.S. Army's flight standards.