Part I: Factors influencing professional functioning 61 include gender, age, educational level and perceived health status. Age was measured continuously. Educational level was categorized into three groups, respectively low (primary education, lower general secondary education, and preparatory secondary vocational education), medium (intermediate vocational training and general secondary education) and high (higher vocational education and university education). Perceived health status had four response categories, respectively very good, good, fair, and bad. The work-related factors include the pace and amount of work, job variety, and work pleasure.These factorsweremeasuredwith the three scales of theQEEW2.0 consisting of statements measured on a five-point Likert scale. The sum score of the scales can be converted to a scale score ranging from 0 to 100 with higher scores representing more unfavorable scores. A higher score indicates higher pace and amount of work, less job variety, and less work pleasure. The scale pace and amount of work consists of six statements, for example ‘Do you have to hurry’. The scale job variety consists of four statements, including ‘Do you have enough variety in your work’?The scale work pleasure consists of five statements, including ‘I enjoy my work’. Statistical analysis Descriptive statistics were generated to report the characteristics of the study population. Distributions of all variables were examined and checked on normality. We computed Pearson correlations between all dependent variables with the outcome measures and to gain insight into possible multicollinearity. Correlations between the dependent variables were allowed if they were lower than 0.60. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted to assess the relationship between understanding speech in noise, NFR, and LE. For both outcomes, predictor variables were included in three blocks (forced entry). For each block, we calculated the change in amount of variance in the outcome variable that is explained by the dependent variables and the contribution of the individual predictors. The blocks of independent variables were the same for the primary and secondary outcomemeasure.The first block included the possible confounders. Amain effect of hearing status was added in the second block. In the third block, an interaction term was added, respectively the interaction between hearing status and the perceived noise level. A significance level of 0.05 was used.
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