Hearing acuity in a Norwegian standard population.

The hearing acuity in stratified age groups of men and women from 20 to 80 years were examined in a Norwegian county. The test subjects were randomly sampled to constitute a standard population. Of the 2343 people invited, 1474 attended. Of those who did not attend, 424 completed and returned a questionnaire. Mean pure-tone thresholds for both ears combined are presented for each sex separately and are given both as audiogram curves and numerically in tabular form. The most remarkable observation is a marked dip at 6 kHz in both sexes, even in the youngest examined age groups.