Abstract
To clarify, the residents of this facility come from families in which the parental educational attainment is at or below high school; some parents completed a high school equivalency examination. All of these residents come from households where unemployment is high and/or wages are below the poverty level to the extent that they are receiving public assistance, specifically housing subsidies and/or food stamps. To underscore the poverty level of this population, all residents were receiving Medicaid as their health insurance before admission to this facility. The fact that they were eligible for Medicaid before their admission clearly identifies the income level status of this population, sufficient for further interpretation.
As for the screening procedures, all residents were screened at 15 dB HL, at 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 6,000, and 8,000 Hz. The screening level used was more stringent than that recommended by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) guidelines [[1]]. Each test frequency was presented two or three times. A “pass” was a response to the test frequency two out of three times. As also stated in the section Procedures of the article, “an air-conduction threshold search using the Carhart-Jerger [[2]] method was conducted on adolescents who did not pass, that is, had a higher threshold than 15 dB HL at any of the six frequencies tested.” This procedure follows current professional practice guidelines for pure tone air conduction threshold assessment [[3]].