Transporting Occupational Hearing Nomograms between Factories
Abstract
In occupational hearing-risk assessment, a convincing output can still be invalid when a score calibrated in one workforce applied unchanged elsewhere. This literature-based conceptual analysis does not report a new experiment. The focal evidence concerns whether baseline hearing measurements can predict subsequent speech-frequency hearing loss in noise-exposed industrial workers. Transportability concerns the changes between a development setting and an intended use setting. Population composition, measurement, practice, and resource availability may all change. Describe the target setting before importing a model. Compare calibration, error types, and downstream decisions, including subgroups whose meaning differs between settings. The proposed comparison concerns industrial cohorts, job tasks, audiometry protocols; it would test whether the specific failure scenario is detected without erasing legitimate uncertainty. An integrated account should preserve the distinction between noise-exposed workers and clinical follow-up and any stronger downstream decision.
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