This study assessed the effective use of pure-tone testing versus speech testing as used to predict the degree of hearing handicap experienced by an individual. Twenty-one subjects over the age of 65 were tested. Each subject was administered the following test battery: spondee threshold; a pure-tone evaluation, including air and bone conduction; Speech Perception in Noise (SPIN) test; Synthetic Sentence Identification (SSI) test; NU-6 for speech discrimination; establishment of most comfortable listening level (MCL) and loudness discomfort listening level (LDL); immittance testing including tympanograms, acoustic reflex thresholds, and reflex decay.