If done properly, I think this is a valuable tool. And by properly, I mean in a sound booth with recorded voice. When I get a call that :my hearing aids just aren’t helping me understand people", I always ask them what their WRS score was. Many don’t know or were never told, but if they say they had 40% for example, I try to make the point that in perfect conditions, they missed over half the words. No hearing aid in the world is going to make an appreciable improvement on that. Not that they don’t help with general hearing, but there are limits to what they can do.
I believe the WRS can be a useful tool to help people understand their hearing loss.