Prevalence of Hearing Impairment Among School Children

Abstract

During the 1968–69 school year, National Speech and Hearing Survey teams tested the hearing of over 38,000 school children from throughout the U.S. However, hearing-loss prevalence information from this comprehensive and carefully controlled survey has never been widely disseminated. A review of these data revealed that the total percentage of children in grades 1 through 12 with PTA’s greater than 25 dB HL was 2.63% (1.9% unilateral, 0.73% bilateral). In contrast, the most frequently cited prevalence rates are at least two-times higher (Eagles, Wishik, Doerfler, Melnick, & Levine, 1963; Roberts & Ahuja, 1975). Because the National Speech and Hearing Survey is by far the largest study of children’s hearing thresholds, and the only one in which all audiometers were calibrated to a modern standard of audiometric zero, its lower estimate appears to be a more precise representation of hearing-loss prevalence among U.S. school children.