Are hearing tests reliable?

@BobbyBoomer said:

But I still don’t understand why to cheat to get into the military.

I’m not intending to dismiss you or to be flippant with this answer:

If you’re a civilian who’s never served, nor had the “call of duty” to do so, you never will understand, because it’s not a rational thing.

'Nuff said on that by me … (And please don’t take offence at my answer.)

I didn’t have to cheat to get, but I would have if needed. My dad was Navy, and my uncles, grandpa, and all of my grandpa’s brothers. It s a family thing. I was the really lucky one, I was always in highly protected areas making sure the communications equipment worked for the front line. I didn’t have to touch a weapon after boot camp, even though I wore the marksman ribbon. I also for about 3 and a half years provided communication for the Presidential Security Detail.

Chuck, I want to write this long spiel about military service and hearing, but I ain’t gonna do it. The answer to the question at hand is that the reliability of the hearing tests depends almost solely on the person being tested. There are a number of reasons to make your hearing appear to be better or worse, depending on your agenda. I do however think if the testing is being done to program a hearing aid, it is in the persons best interest to be as accurate as possible. In this situation there is nothing to be gained by skewing the test. Just my 2 cents worth.
Dan
p.s. Thank you for your service!

I believe from my experience that I could make my hearing appear worse but never better. I haven’t had a test that would have given me a chance to cheat. My test have always been done with a hearing specialist or audiologist personally doing it. Maybe there is something out there that puts more than one through the test at once and I just haven’t seen it.

Well, you nay gave provided yourself the answer, Bobby. Some would cheat to get that classification, and some would cheat to try to beat it.

I’m in your camp, BTW. I don’t know why some choose to cheat - at anything. Peace.

But still they do. The spirit is strong but the flesh is weak. And life goes on

Like they said in NYC in 1776. God save the king

Some “patients”, or persons, are predisposed to preferring certainty. With tinnitus too, such persons (likely including myself!) cannot be reliably or precisely tested, IMHO.
Ambiguity that is introduced by “if you think you hear it” conditions is expected to increased, probably massively.
Just my $0.02, FWIW. Best, Bob.

I completely agree with you, but that isn’t cheating, to be honest the time of the day will affect my hearing loss which will affect the results of my hearing test.

On a more serious note though, I was playing around with my jabras today trying to do an in situ test and use the built in hearing test. It is very interesting to take the test when I know the sound is playing as I hit the button

I had too much cat distraction and will try again later but should be an interesting experiment. In this case I am definitely trying to see what I can and cannot hear. As I seemed to hedge on the ‘if I’m not sure say no’ side so will see how that affects things.

I’ve thought about this several times over the years. When I was younger and my hearing was much better I was always thrown by the sounds I could hear form outside the booth…people walking down the hallway…and the booth was in a closed door room. I think this is silly, no way can this test be meaningful if people making noise way out there can make me miss one of the low level beeps…

and then the tinnitus, etc…

I’ve come to accept that “good enough” is probably the key phrase. No doubt the audiologists can cull through the noise and mistakes of the test…or at least much of it.
+
it doesn’t really matter of the REAL result is an 2 dB loss vs a 2.2 dB loss. Well I’m an Engineer so it does to me…but not for any practical reason
whatever…it’s all about good enough and tweaking the aids for “decent” understanding of speech (or hearing of sounds)

Most booths or at least the ones that I get tested in now are sound proof. But there will always variables. But I look at my test results over 30 years and I would have to conclude that the tests are pretty reliable. My first hearing test that showed a discrepancy happened in a school nursing office. Good enough to spot a problem

Would a kind soul please tell me how to post a message? Thank you so much! Rosedala

Click on your avatar (symbol that you created (flags in your instance) in upper right hand corner. Menu opens, click on name at far left, then click on messages. Under your audiogram, there should be “New Message” highlighted in blue. I think it’s self explanatory after that, but if not, let us know.