Comparison of tinnitus loudness measures: Matching, rating, and scaling

Purpose: Chronic tinnitus (“ringing in the ears”) is a phantom auditory perception with no cure. A goal of treatment is often to reduce the loudness of tinnitus. However, tinnitus loudness cannot be measured objectively. It is most commonly assessed by obtaining a loudness match (LM) with a pure tone and by using a numeric rating scale (NRS). Constrained loudness scaling (CLS) is a more recent measure of tinnitus loudness that utilizes auditory training of a fixed loudness scale to guide tinnitus loudness judgments. The purpose of this study was to compare results using these 3 measures of tinnitus loudness. Method: This study obtained tinnitus loudness measures of LM, NRS, and CLS with 170 participants. These participants are part of a larger study obtaining repeated measures over 6 months. Only baseline data are presented. Results: Correlations between all measures were weak to moderate: LM versus CLS (r =.46), CLS versus NRS (r =.49), and LM versus NRS (r =.38). Conclusion: Further systematic research is needed to more fully understand the relationships between these different measures and to establish a valid measure of tinnitus loudness.