Inter-Rater Reliability of Auditory Brainstem Response Waveforms Elicited by Complex Stimuli

Abstract

Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the inter-rater reliability of peak marking for the frequency following the response portion of auditory brainstem response (ABR) waveforms elicited by complex stimuli.

Materials and Methods: ABR testing was carried out on 30 adult participants with normal hearing, which generated a data set of 60 click-evoked waveforms and 60/da/-evoked waveforms. Three audiologists marked peaks for both click and/da/evoked ABR waveform data, derived from 30 participants aged 18–30 years. To assess inter-rater reliability, a two-way, random effects, single-measure model was used to calculate the intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs).

Results: The ICCs were ≥0.89 for peaks I, III, and V of the click-evoked waveforms. For the/da/evoked waveforms, the ICCs were rated good to high (≥0.83) for peaks V, A, E, F, and O, fair (0.75) for peak D but poor (≥0.45) for peak C.

Conclusion: Investigations of reliability of waveform marking should be undertaken before using complex stimuli for ABR testing to prevent premature adoption of screening or diagnostic tools.