1 Taralye, Blackburn, Victoria, Australia

2  Deafness Studies Unit, Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne, Australia

To ensure that children with impaired hearing have optimal access to spoken communication, the amplification of sound to the child's ear canal is provided through the use of a hearing aid. To maximize the benefits of the hearing aid, the methods used to assess the amount of amplification provided to the child's ear canal must be accurate. The real ear gain was measured in seventeen preschool children using functional gain and insertion gain techniques. The study aimed to determine whether these measures were equivalent and to assess the accuracy of each measure in this preschool population. The results indicated that overall the two measures of real ear gain provided equivalent results. However when the differences between functional gain and insertion gain where compared in individuals, a high level of variability between the measures was observed. Examination of the components of the test procedures suggested that insertion gain was a more accurate measure of real ear gain in pre school children. However, the results indicated that audiologists continue to use functional gain as the preferred method of verifying the hearing aid fitting.