ABSTRACT
The financial reporting landscape is continuing to expand with both regulated and voluntary disclosures making their way into various reporting frameworks. This increased attention to disclosures is being pursued by professional bodies, governments, companies and other organisations given the changing demands by stakeholders for sustainability disclosures. The Australian superannuation industry is a compulsory system developed to ensure a comfortable retirement income for members. It is now a trillion-dollar business and therefore, has significant influence on the investment decisions that it makes on behalf of its members. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) are increasingly being used as a signal to the market that an organisation is meeting the demands of stakeholders. The objective of this study is exploratory in nature, investigating the types of SDG disclosures made by the largest superannuation funds in Australia. Data was collected through a content analysis of the annual and/or supplementary reports produced by Australian superannuation funds. The findings suggest that Australian superannuation funds currently disclose a minimal level information in accordance with the SDGs in different reporting formats and the SDGs tends to prevail where superannuation managers believe they can have the most impact. Our results have implications for SDG reporting, policy and management practice. Future research that helps explain how managers choose which SDGs to report would be a useful contribution in the context of superannuation.
ABSTRACT
Globally, more than 1.5 billion people have hearing loss. Unfortunately, most people with hearing loss reside in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) where traditional face-to-face services rendered by trained health professionals are few and unequally dispersed. The COVID-19 pandemic has further hampered the effectiveness of traditional service delivery models to provide hearing care. Digital health technologies are strong enablers of hearing care and can support health delivery models that are more sustainable. The convergence of advancing technology and mobile connectivity is enabling new ways of providing decentralized hearing services. Recently, an abundance of digital applications that offer hearing tests directly to the public has become available. A growing body of evidence has shown the ability of several approaches to provide accurate, accessible, and remote hearing assessment to consumers. Further effort is needed to promote greater accuracy across a variety of test platforms, improve sensitivity to ear disease, and scale up hearing rehabilitation, especially in LMICs.
ABSTRACT
Objective: COVID-19 has been prohibitive to traditional audiological services. No- or low-touch audiological assessment outside a sound-booth precludes test batteries including bone conduction audiometry. This study investigated whether conductive hearing loss (CHL) can be differentiated from sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) using pure-tone air conduction audiometry and a digits-in-noise (DIN) test.Design: A retrospective sample was analysed using binomial logistic regressions, which determined the effects of pure tone thresholds or averages, speech recognition threshold (SRT), and age on the likelihood that participants had CHL or bilateral SNHL.Study sample: Data of 158 adults with bilateral SNHL (n = 122; PTA0.5-4 kHz > 25 dB HL bilaterally) or CHL (n = 36; air conduction PTA0.5-4 kHz > 25 dB HL and ≥20 dB air bone gap in the affected ears) were included.Results: The model which best discriminated between CHL and bilateral SNHL used low-frequency pure-tone average (PTA), diotic DIN SRT, and age with an area under the ROC curve of 0.98 and sensitivity and specificity of 97.2 and 93.4%, respectively.Conclusion: CHL can be accurately distinguished from SNHL using pure-tone air conduction audiometry and a diotic DIN. Restrictions on traditional audiological assessment due to COVID-19 require lower touch audiological care which reduces infection risk.