Best audiology Praxis study guide for 5343 prep
ETS publishes the 5343 domains. StudyHub adds practice questions with a rationale for every option and a domain-weighted bank. The Exam Prep Pass is the 90-day run-up.
Written by Erica Guberman, Au.D. · Updated September 17, 2026
What the Praxis Audiology exam is
The Praxis Audiology exam, ETS test 5343, is a computer-delivered test built and scored by the Educational Testing Service. It runs 120 multiple-choice questions with two hours to complete them, answered entirely on screen. There is no separate writing section and no oral component.
ETS reports scores on its 100 to 200 scale, and 162 is the passing score most state licensing boards and certification bodies require. States and certifying bodies adopt ETS's scoring scale rather than setting their own, which is why 162 shows up almost everywhere the exam is used as a gate, but the exact requirement should always be confirmed with the specific state board or certifying body involved rather than assumed.
ETS organizes every question on the exam into one of five published domains, covered in the next section, and the Study Companion gives their approximate weights: Foundations about 24 questions (20 percent), Prevention and Screening about 12 (10 percent), Assessment about 42 (35 percent), Intervention about 30 (25 percent), and Professional and Ethical Responsibilities about 12 (10 percent). Assessment alone is more than a third of the exam, which is the single biggest reason a study plan should not split time evenly across the five.
The full exam format, sourced the same way as this page, is also covered on Praxis Audiology exam format, and the question bank behind it lives on Praxis prep.
The five domains ETS publishes
Foundations
The underlying science an audiologist draws on before touching a patient: acoustics and the decibel scales that describe sound, anatomy and physiology of the auditory and vestibular systems, psychoacoustic phenomena such as loudness and pitch perception, and the instrumentation used to measure all of it.
Prevention and screening
Catching hearing loss and noise damage before they become disabling: newborn and school-age hearing screening protocols, occupational and recreational noise exposure limits, and the components of a hearing conservation program.
Assessment
The full range of diagnostic testing, and the largest domain at about 42 questions, 35 percent of the exam: pure-tone and speech audiometry, masking decisions, immittance and acoustic reflexes, otoacoustic emissions, auditory evoked potentials, and vestibular testing, along with choosing the right method for a child's developmental age.
Intervention
What happens once a diagnosis is made: hearing aid candidacy, prescriptive fitting and real-ear verification, cochlear implant candidacy, aural rehabilitation strategies, and tinnitus management.
Professional practice and responsibilities
The ethical, legal, and regulatory framework audiology is practiced within: scope of practice and supervision of assistants and students, informed consent, recordkeeping, and the codes of ethics that govern the profession.
Topic map: what to be able to explain
A working list of specific topics inside each domain, pulled from the same question bank behind StudyHub and the Exam Prep Pass. Being able to explain each bullet in a sentence or two, not just recognize it, is the bar worth aiming for.
Foundations
- Decibel scales and reference levels: intensity versus pressure, and SPL, HL, and SL
- The middle ear's transformer mechanism and the impedance-mismatch problem it solves
- Cochlear anatomy and physiology, including outer and inner hair cell function
- Vestibular system anatomy: the semicircular canals and otolith organs
- Psychoacoustic phenomena: loudness, pitch, masking, and temporal and spectral resolution
- Pathophysiology of hearing loss, including presbycusis subtypes and noise-induced damage
- Basic instrumentation, calibration, and measurement standards
Prevention and screening
- Newborn hearing screening protocols and the JCIH 1-3-6 timeline
- School-age and adult hearing screening protocols
- Occupational noise exposure limits and exchange rates
- Hearing conservation program components: baseline audiograms, threshold shifts, hearing protection
- Ototoxic monitoring
- Risk-indicator surveillance for progressive or late-onset hearing loss
Go deeper: NIOSH vs OSHA noise exposure limits, Newborn hearing screening timeline
Assessment
- Pure-tone audiometry procedure and threshold criteria
- Masking decisions and interaural attenuation values
- Speech audiometry: SRT, word recognition, PB max, and rollover
- Immittance testing: tympanogram types and acoustic reflex patterns
- Otoacoustic emissions and auditory evoked potentials, including ABR
- Vestibular test battery, including the Dix-Hallpike maneuver
- Pediatric behavioral test selection by developmental age
- The cross-check principle and internal consistency across the audiogram
Go deeper: How to read an audiogram, Tympanogram types explained, Interaural attenuation for masking, ABR waves I, III, and V, Dix-Hallpike and BPPV, SRT versus word recognition testing
Intervention
- Hearing aid candidacy and style selection
- Prescriptive fitting formulas and real-ear verification
- Signal processing: compression, directional microphones, noise reduction
- Cochlear implant candidacy criteria
- Aural rehabilitation strategies
- Tinnitus management approaches
Go deeper: Real-ear measurement verification, Cochlear implant candidacy
Professional practice and responsibilities
- Scope of practice and supervision of assistants and students
- Informed consent and documentation standards
- Recordkeeping and confidentiality in an audiology practice
- Billing, coding, and reimbursement basics
- Professional codes of ethics
- Evidence-based practice and research literacy
Go deeper: Praxis Audiology exam format
Study timeline
Both plans below are a general shape, not a promise about how much time this or any study plan takes to work, since that depends on how recently the material was covered in coursework and how much clinical exposure backs it up. Adjust the weighting toward assessment, and toward personal weak areas, more than the exact week boundaries.
An 8-week plan
Weeks 1 to 2
Foundations and prevention and screening: acoustics, anatomy and physiology, psychoacoustics, newborn and school screening, and noise conservation. This is background the other domains lean on.
Weeks 3 to 5
Assessment, in depth: pure-tone and speech audiometry, masking, immittance and reflexes, otoacoustic emissions and evoked potentials, vestibular testing, and pediatric test selection. This is the largest single domain, so it gets the largest block of weeks.
Week 6
Intervention: hearing aid selection and verification, cochlear implants, aural rehabilitation, and tinnitus management.
Week 7
Professional practice and responsibilities, plus a first pass at reviewing whichever domain's practice questions turned up the most misses so far.
Week 8
Timed practice sets mixing all five domains, rationale review on every miss, and a lighter final few days rather than new material right up to test day.
A 4-week plan
Week 1
A timed diagnostic set across all five domains to find weak areas fast, then a rapid review pass across foundations and prevention and screening.
Week 2
Assessment, the largest domain, gets the biggest share of this week: audiometry, masking, immittance, evoked potentials, and vestibular testing.
Week 3
Intervention and professional practice and responsibilities, plus a second pass through whichever topics the Week 1 diagnostic flagged as weakest.
Week 4
Full timed practice sets mixing all five domains, rationale review on every miss, and a lighter final couple of days.
Study tips
- Read every option's rationale, not only the one for the correct answer. Wrong options are usually built around a specific, common misconception, and naming that misconception is what transfers to a different question on the same idea.
- Weight study time to match how the exam is weighted. ETS puts assessment at about 35 percent and intervention at about 25 percent, so those two domains deserve close to 60 percent of study time, with foundations (about 20 percent), prevention and screening (about 10 percent) and professional responsibilities (about 10 percent) filling out the rest.
- Practice in timed sets that mirror exam pacing. Two hours for 120 questions works out to about one minute per question on average, so timed practice sets build the pacing habit rather than only content recall.
- Mix domains within a single practice set rather than only ever practicing one domain in a block, since the real exam interleaves them and does not announce which domain a question belongs to.
- Keep a running list of missed topics pulled from rationales, and revisit that list specifically rather than only moving forward to new material.
- Build fluency with the exam's calculation-heavy topics, such as decibel scales, pure-tone averages, and the rollover index, since these tend to reward practiced arithmetic more than memorized facts.
- Confirm the passing score and any other requirements with the specific state board or certifying body involved well before scheduling the exam, since boards adopt ETS's scale rather than always matching it exactly.
- Plan for a lighter final day or two before the exam rather than cramming new material right up to test day.
Sample questions from the bank
Three questions, three different domains, each shown in full: every option, a reason given for every one of them, and the teaching point behind the item. More like these live in StudyHub, and the Learn library has short explainers on specific topics like these.
Sample item from the bank
A technician doubles the sound pressure output of a loudspeaker. By how many decibels does the sound pressure level increase?
- 3 dBIncorrect3 dB is the increase produced by doubling intensity or power, which uses the 10 log rule. Pressure ratios use 20 log.
- 6 dBCorrectdB SPL = 20 log(P1/P0). Doubling pressure gives 20 log(2), which is approximately 6 dB.
- 10 dBIncorrect10 dB corresponds to a tenfold increase in intensity, and is also the rough rule for doubling perceived loudness. Neither is a doubling of pressure.
- 20 dBIncorrect20 dB corresponds to a tenfold increase in pressure, since 20 log(10) = 20. The multiplier has been swapped for the coefficient in front of the log.
What to take from it
Keep two formulas straight: 10 log for intensity or power ratios, 20 log for pressure ratios. Doubling intensity is +3 dB, doubling pressure is +6 dB, and a tenfold pressure increase is +20 dB.
Sample item from the bank
Which set of values best represents the minimum interaural attenuation assumed in clinical masking decisions?
- 40 dB for supra-aural earphones, 55 dB for insert earphones, and 0 dB for bone conductionCorrectClinicians use the minimum of the reported range so that cross-hearing is never missed. Supra-aural attenuation begins around 40 dB, inserts around 55 dB and often much more in the low frequencies, and a mastoid vibrator drives both cochleae nearly equally.
- 40 dB for supra-aural earphones, 40 dB for insert earphones, and 40 dB for bone conductionIncorrectBone conduction has essentially no interaural attenuation. A vibrator on one mastoid sets the whole skull in motion and stimulates both cochleae at nearly the same level.
- 0 dB for supra-aural earphones, 40 dB for insert earphones, and 55 dB for bone conductionIncorrectBone conduction has the least interaural attenuation of the three and insert earphones the most. Every value here is placed on the wrong transducer.
- 55 dB for supra-aural earphones, 40 dB for insert earphones, and 10 dB for bone conductionIncorrectThe two earphone types are swapped. Inserts increase interaural attenuation because the transducer contacts far less of the skull than a supra-aural cushion does.
What to take from it
Use the minimum of the observed range, not the average, because using an average would let cross-hearing go undetected in exactly the patients whose skulls transmit best. Reported supra-aural values span roughly 40 to 85 dB, and insert values can exceed 70 dB below 1000 Hz. That extra headroom is what resolves so many masking impasses.
Sample item from the bank
A patient with a moderate sensorineural hearing loss and a reduced dynamic range is fit with wide dynamic range compression. What is the primary purpose of WDRC in this fitting?
- To prevent the hearing aid output from exceeding loudness discomfort levelIncorrectThat describes output compression limiting or a high-level AGC-o circuit, which acts only at very high input levels and has a high kneepoint and a very high compression ratio.
- To apply more gain to soft inputs than to loud inputsCorrectWDRC uses a low compression threshold, commonly 40 to 50 dB SPL, and a low compression ratio, commonly under 3 to 1, so soft speech becomes audible while loud sounds stay comfortable, packaging the wide range of everyday sound levels into the patient's narrowed residual dynamic range, which is exactly what a recruiting ear needs.
- To reduce the gain applied to very soft inputsIncorrectThat describes expansion, which is the mirror image of compression and operates below about 40 dB SPL, reducing gain there so that circuit and microphone noise is not amplified.
- To keep the frequency response constant across all input levelsIncorrectWDRC deliberately changes the effective frequency response with input level, since channels with more loss compress more, rather than preserving speech spectrum shape by keeping the response constant.
What to take from it
A single hearing aid typically uses expansion at very low levels, WDRC through the conversational range, and output limiting at the top, so the input-output curve has three distinct regions.
Frequently asked
What is the Praxis Audiology exam, and who has to take it?
It is a computer-delivered exam, built and scored by ETS, used by many state licensing boards and certification bodies as part of audiology licensure or certification. Requirements vary by state and certifying body, so confirm the specific requirement with your own board rather than assuming it matches every other state.
How many questions are on the exam, and how long is it?
120 multiple-choice questions, all answered on a computer, with two hours allotted to complete the exam.
What score do I need to pass?
ETS scores the exam on a 100 to 200 scale, and 162 is the passing score most state licensing boards and certification bodies require. Confirm the exact requirement with your own state board, since it is the licensing body, not ETS, that sets the passing requirement for its jurisdiction.
Which domain carries the most weight on the exam?
Assessment, at about 42 of the 120 questions (35 percent). It covers pure-tone and speech audiometry, masking, immittance, otoacoustic emissions, evoked potentials, and vestibular testing. Intervention is next at about 25 percent.
Does ETS publish an exact percentage breakdown for each domain?
Yes, approximately. The Study Companion lists about 24 questions (20 percent) for Foundations, 12 (10 percent) for Prevention and Screening, 42 (35 percent) for Assessment, 30 (25 percent) for Intervention, and 12 (10 percent) for Professional and Ethical Responsibilities, with a note that the exact count varies slightly by form.
How long should I study before taking the exam?
There is no single honest number, since it depends on how recently the material was covered in coursework and how much clinical exposure backs it up. The 8-week and 4-week plans on this page are a general shape to adapt, not a guarantee about outcome or timing.
Do rationales matter more than memorizing facts?
For transfer to new questions, generally yes. Reading why every wrong option is wrong, not only which option is correct, tends to surface the specific misconception a question is testing, which generalizes better than memorizing one right answer.
Where can I practice with more questions like these?
The full question bank with rationales lives in StudyHub, and the Exam Prep Pass on Praxis Prep is built around these same five domains. Exam format, timing, scoring, and the domain weights are on the Praxis Audiology exam format page.
Keep going
The 1,300-plus question bank with rationales for every option lives in StudyHub, along with the Exam Prep Pass on Praxis Prep. Free live Kahoot sessions run on Erica's schedule, and a one-on-one study session is there for anything a page can't answer.