• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.29 no.3 s.54
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• pp.539-553
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• 1996

The study was 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 pure-tone 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 10th 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 by the initial audiometer were significant in males while age, work duration and hearing threshold loss at 1KHz and 4KHz were significant in females. In the stepwise linear regression analysis, 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.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.12 no.10
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• pp.97-104
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• 2021

The purpose of the study was to investigate whether there are differences in confrontation naming ability, generative naming ability, hearing handicap, and depression in community-dwelling elderly by age group, and whether there is any correlation among them, and to find out what factors explain the two naming abilities (confront and generative) of the elderly. Sixty-five community-dwelling elderly people participated: 65~74 years were classified into young-old; 75~84 years into old-old; and 85 years and over into oldest-old. K-BNT-15 for the confrontation naming ability, animal naming test for the generative naming ability, K-HHIE for the subjective hearing handicap, and GDS for the subjective depression were administered. First, there was a statistically significant difference in confrontation naming and depression levels according to age groups. Second, there was a positive correlation between chronological age and subjective depression level and between subjective hearing handicap level and subjective depression level, and a negative correlation between education level and subjective depression level. Third, the confrontation naming score was explained by age, and the generative naming score was explained by subjective depression level. The results show that naming abilities, subjective hearing handicap, and subjective depression level are not simply the result of normal aging and that a convergence approach is needed in various fields to solve the issue.