Foundations and Professional Practice
Scope of practice and role boundaries
The foundational domain tests whether you know what audiologists may and may not do, and the ethical and legal scaffolding around practice. Know the ASHA scope-of-practice categories: prevention, identification/assessment, intervention, and rehabilitation of hearing, balance, and related disorders. A recurring trap is confusing activities that require an audiologist (diagnostic audiometry, vestibular assessment, hearing aid fitting, cerumen management where permitted) with activities that are delegated or shared (hearing screening by trained technicians, speech-language pathology goals).
Ethics, licensure, and credentialing
Expect items on the Code of Ethics principles: duty of care, informed consent, confidentiality, avoiding conflicts of interest, and accurate representation of credentials. Traps include billing questions (never upcoding or unbundling to maximize reimbursement) and supervision questions (the supervising audiologist retains responsibility for delegated tasks). Distinguish state licensure (legal permission to practice) from ASHA CCC-A certification (voluntary professional credential) and from specialty certification.
Regulations and reimbursement
Understand IDEA, Section 504, ADA, HIPAA, and FERPA at a conceptual level, plus how reimbursement models (fee-for-service, managed care, capitation) shape practice. A common distractor is treating FERPA and HIPAA as interchangeable: FERPA governs education records; HIPAA governs protected health information in covered entities.
Research and evidence-based practice
Know the hierarchy of evidence (systematic reviews/meta-analyses above RCTs above cohort/case studies above expert opinion), sensitivity versus specificity, and basic screening statistics.
Worked rule of thumb: For a screening test, sensitivity = true positives / (true positives + false negatives). If 90 of 100 people with hearing loss screen positive and 100 of 400 without loss also screen positive, sensitivity = 90/100 = 0.90 and specificity = 300/400 = 0.75. Questions often ask which value changes when prevalence changes-specificity and sensitivity do not; positive predictive value does.