Pure tone audiometry is the basic test to find out if a hearing loss is present or not. During the test the test person wears a headphone or insert ear phones through which pure tones at different frequencies are being presented.
The intensity of the tones is gradually reduced until the hearing threshold the, point at which tones are barely audible is found. The result is expressed in decibel(dB) and entered into an audiogram form.
By means of speech audiometry it is tested how much intelligibility at different intensity levels is present. The test consists of a certain number of words presented via headphones or free field loudspeakers. These words the test person has to repeat. After finishing the test a percentage of how many words were correctly repeated can be derived.
Speech tests can be used for various purposes: evaluating how much intelligibility is left without using hearing instruments, predicting and evaluating the intelligibility improvement by means of hearing instruments and comparing intelligibility differences between different hearing instruments.
