Development of a new standard laboratory protocol for estimation of the field attenuation of hearing protection devices: Sample size necessary to provide acceptable reproducibility
Abstract
The mandate of ASA Working Group S12/WG11 has been to develop ``laboratory and/or field procedure(s) that yield useful estimates of field performance'' of hearing protection devices (HPDs). A real-ear attenuation at threshold procedure was selected, devised, tested for one earmuff and three earplugs via an interlaboratory study involving five laboratories and 147 subjects, and incorporated into a new standard that was approved in 1997 [Royster et al., ``Development of a new standard laboratory protocol for estimating the field attenuation of hearing protection devices. Part I. Research of Working Group 11, Accredited Standards Committee S12, Noise,'' J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 99, 1506-1526 ANSI, S12.6-1997, ``American National Standard method for measuring real-ear attenuation of hearing protectors'' (American National Standards Institute, New York, 1997)]. The subject-fit methodology of ANSI S12.6-1997 relies upon listeners who are audiometrically proficient, but inexperienced in the use of HPDs. Whenever a new method is adopted, it is important to know the effects of variability on the power of the measurements. In evaluation of protector noise reduction determined by experimenter-fit, informed-user-fit, and subject-fit methods, interlaboratory reproducibility was found to be best for the subject-fit method. Formulas were derived for determining the minimum detectable difference between attenuation measurements and for determining the number of subjects necessary to achieve a selected level of precision. For a precision of 6 dB, the study found that the minimum number of subjects was 4 for the Bilsom UF-1 earmuff, 10 for the E.A.R Classic earplug, 31 for the Willson EP100 earplug, and 22 for the PlasMed V-51R earplug.
- Publication:
-
Acoustical Society of America Journal
- Pub Date:
- January 2004
- DOI:
- 10.1121/1.1633559
- Bibcode:
- 2004ASAJ..115..311M
- Keywords:
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- ear protection;
- measurement standards;
- protocols