HINT Hearing Test Now Available Online

Editor: There have been several online hearing tests over the past few years, but none has been very accurate. The ones I've seen have all been pure tone tests that try to measure a person's hearing at various frequencies. The problem is that computer sound systems vary so much in quality that the test is often a measure of the quality of the computer sound system rather than of a person's hearing. My laptop speakers, for example, have very little output at either low or high frequencies, so anyone taking the test on my laptop would fail the low and high frequency portions of the test.

The HINT test doesn't try to measure hearing at different frequencies. It presents several sentences with background noise - hence the name Hearing in Noise Test (HINT) - and asks the user if he understood each sentence. Because virtually all of the signal and noise are in middle frequencies - which all speakers reproduce pretty well - a person can take this test on virtually any system.

Here's the notice (with the appropriate URL), as it appeared in bhNEWS.

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The Hearing in Noise Test-Functional Screener is now available.

A simplified version of the House Ear Institute's hearing in noise test (HINT) for evaluating functional hearing ability in noisy conditions is now accessible online.

The HINT is being offered on the HealthyConnections.com and HEI.org Web sites as the HINT-FS (Hearing in Noise Test-Functional Screener).

The HINT-FS is the first online hearing test that detects a person's difficulty understanding speech in background noise, while not being subject to the variances in computer speakers. The online test measures speech recognition within a variety of "noisy" situations using a fixed (or constant) signal-to-noise ratio.

It has been clinically validated, but is not intended to replace a full audiological evaluation by a health professional.

"The online version of the HINT test allows people to determine if they might have suffered hearing loss and need to seek help from a qualified professional," according to Paul Dragul, MD, otolaryngologist and founder of HealthyConnections.com.

Dr. Dragul worries that most people at risk for hearing loss will not seek out an office-based hearing test, because they don't recognize their own hearing loss.

BobNote: Here is the direct link to the condensed version of the well acclaimed HINT test from the House Ear Insitute: