The November 2025 issue (Vol. 78, Issue 11) of The Hearing Journal features a peer-reviewed article from Shannon M. Van Hyfte, AuD, CCC-A, Clinical Professor in Purdue University's Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, documenting how Purdue rebuilt its decades-old occupational Hearing Conservation Program around Soundtrace.
The full article — Hearing Conservation Program Model in a University Setting: Building Upon Historic Success — is available open-access from the journal.
What the article documents
Purdue's legacy program relied on a once-a-year mobile testing window with manual scheduling, paper records, and individual ~30-minute appointments. The article details the team's transition to a revised in-house model built around Soundtrace's automated audiometric testing and automated recordkeeping, deployed in a single consolidated "hearing conservation week" supported by Purdue's AuD program students.
Source: Van Hyfte SM. Hearing Conservation Program Model in a University Setting: Building Upon Historic Success. The Hearing Journal, November 2025; 78(11). Bar lengths scaled to legacy value (30 minutes).
The numbers Purdue reported
Beyond the time-per-test improvement, the article reports a sharp drop in no-show rates: from a historical range of 16-24% under the legacy model down to 2.7% (251 of 258 eligible employees tested) under the revised week-long model. That combination — faster individual tests and dramatically higher follow-through — is what allowed an entire eligible workforce to be tested inside a single week without compromising the AuD-student educational component the program has been known for.
Why this publication matters
The Hearing Journal is one of the most widely read trade publications in audiology, and Purdue's program has been a reference point for university-based occupational hearing conservation for decades. Seeing the Soundtrace-powered model documented in that venue, by a Purdue clinical professor, validates a pattern we hear from customers across industry and underpins the 57% faster testing benchmark we cite from the Purdue study.
It also lines up with the implementation-timeline framework Soundtrace published earlier this year: read more in the companion Implementation: Days, Not Months white paper or the longer Soundtrace overview of the Purdue study on the blog.
Independent, peer-reviewed documentation from a program with Purdue's pedigree is the strongest possible signal that this approach to hearing conservation works — and that it works without sacrificing the clinical and educational rigor occupational audiology has always demanded.
Jeff Wilson, Founder & CEO, Soundtrace
If you're an EHS or audiology leader exploring whether this model would work for your population, request an audiometric testing quote or book a demo — we'll walk through the Purdue program design and how it maps to your organization.
Related Resource
Read the full article in The Hearing Journal