THIEME 358 Original Research Headphone Evaluation for App-Based Automated Mobile Hearing Screening Adam W. Pickens1 LakshmiDakuriRobertson1 Matthew Lee Smith2,3 Qi Zheng4 Sejun Song5 1 Texas A&M Ergonomics Center, Department of Environmental and Address for correspondence Adam W. Pickens, PhD, MPH, Texas A&M Occupational Health, Texas A&M Health Science Center (TAMHSC) Health Science Center School of Public Health, 1266 TAMU, College School of Public Health, College Station, TX, United States Station, TX 77843-1266, United States 2 Center for Population Health and Aging, Department of Environmental (e-mail:
[email protected]). and Occupational Health, Texas A&M Health Science Center (TAMHSC) School of Public Health, College Station, TX, United States 3 Department of Health Promotion & Behavior, College of Public Health, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, United States 4 Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Texas A&M Health Science Center (TAMHSC) School of Public Health, College Station, TX, United States 5 University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) School of Computing and Engineering, Kansas City, MO, United States Int Arch Otorhinolaryngol 2018;22:358–363. Abstract Introduction With the need for hearing screenings increasing across multiple populations, a need for automated options has been identified. This research seeks to evaluate the hardware requirements for automated hearing screenings using a mobile application. Objective Evaluation of headphone hardware for use with an app-based mobile screening application. Methods For the purposes of this study, hEAR, a Bekesy-based mobile application designed by the research team, was compared with pure tone audiometric tests administered by an audiologist. Both hEAR and the audiologist’s test used 7 frequen- cies (125 Hz, 250 Hz, 500 Hz, 1,000 Hz, 2000 Hz, 4,000 Hz and 8,000 Hz) adopting four different sets of commercially available headphones.