Arabic version of acceptable noise level (ANL)

Abstract

Background: ANL is a procedure to evaluate the quantity of noise that listeners are willing to take over while listening to words. ANL has gained big attention in the final few years because of its ability to predict success rate of hearing aid with a high degree of accuracy. Knowing why certain people are less probable to accept background noise help in creating hearing aid technology to address their objections and improve their ANL hence increasing success rate of hearing aid function. Objectives of the study: development and Standardization of Arabic version of ANL in Egyptian normal hearing listeners. Materials and method: 52 normal hearing adults undergo this research. ANL was performed using an Arabic familiar story 40 Sec duration and competing background noise of multitalker babble. Both stimuli were routed through the same loudspeaker located at zero azimuth 1 m from the subject in a sound treated room. The results: the mean ANL of the Arabic version in participant with normal hearing is 7.76 dB with a standard deviation of 3.55. Conclusion: the new Arabic version of acceptable noise level (ANL) can be applied as a standardized test for measuring acceptable noise level.