JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Noise Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL) is extremely prevalent in the United States, affecting millions of people despite being almost completely preventable. Regulations and tools exist to reduce NIHL risk in settings such as the workplace and concerts however for music listening through a user’s personal listening equipment (PLE) such as earbuds, there has yet to be a way for users to accurately assess their risk of hearing loss without simultaneously sacrificing their enjoyment of the music.

Objective:

The primary objectives of this research were to analyze whether or not a device that encouraged NIHL prevention using noise exposure data would be useful to those who regularly enjoy music and to determine the most effective methods of such encouragement. Each method was categorized into three different NIHL Risk Notification (NRN) types: Auditory, External Visual, Visual.

Methods:

A survey was created and posted to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk as well as various Reddit communities related to music and music making. The survey was designed to gauge each respondent’s current NIHL awareness, willingness to lower their audio’s volume after receiving an NRN, and NRN type preference. The likelihood of an NRN type to encourage NIHL prevention in an individual was based on that individual’s responses to two survey questions regarding their hypothetical NRN use. These responses were combined into a percentage for each individual and then averaged across all respondents who chose an NRN type.

Results:

Of 116 respondents, 79.3% reported having prior awareness about NIHL, however 51.7% describe doing nothing to prevent it despite 82.8% feeling a moderate, high, or extreme risk of developing NIHL. Of those who were already preventing NIHL, 95.5% described using estimates to guide their NIHL prevention instead of using exact data. Of the three NRN types suggested in the survey, the visual type was selected by the highest amount of participants (n = 84). However, compared to the visual NRN type, the auditory type had a significantly higher (P = .03) average likelihood of encouraging NIHL prevention (61.9%) among the 40 respondents that chose it. Regardless of the NRN type, 69.0% of all respondents were not opposed to using NRNs and lowering their audio volume accordingly.

Conclusions:

The hypothetical device detailed here was determined to be useful since a large majority of respondents felt a high risk of developing NIHL, such a device could provide those who currently use estimates to prevent NIHL more accurate data, and most respondents were willing to receive and act on NRNs. The most effective NRN type was the auditory type, but many aspects of this study need to be expanded upon and studied further to finalize the best implementation method to reach the general public.