Understanding Your Hearing Range: A Guide to Testing & Baseline Audiometry

Yearly hearing testing can detect early signs and symptoms of hearing loss before it is too late to correct. When being examined by a doctor for the first time, it is important to have your hearing checked to create a baseline from which to judge future hearing ranges and levels. Hearing tests are painless and fairly quick. There are tests you can perform on your own if you want to get an idea of your hearing range.

Things You'll Need

• Tuning fork
• Stopwatch

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Instructions

• 1

  Test your hearing with a tuning fork. Have someone tap a tuning fork and hold it on the bone behind your ear called the mastoid. This will not hurt. With a stopwatch, time when you no longer feel the vibrations in the bone. Write down the results.

• 2

  Conduct open ear test. Hold the tuning fork about five inches from the opening of your ear and have your friend tap the top of the tuning fork. Start the stopwatch. Signal when you no longer hear the sound vibrating from the tuning fork.

• 3

  Conduct online test. Go to the Egopont website (See resources). Plug in computer earphones and make sure the room is quiet. Turn up the volume on your computer to medium. Press the link for 1000 Hz and adjust the sound to a comfortable level. Human speech is normally between 250 Hz and 8,000 Hz. Click on each hertz level to test your hearing range.