PP702 - An Experiment with Wearable Technology to Improve Awareness and Safety of Music Practice in Music Students

Abstract:
University music students are often confronted with sound levels above safe limits, risking loud music-induced hearing loss. This project explored the use of a Smart Watch to reduce the risk of hearing damage and awareness. The Smart Watch was compared to a dosimeter to measure music practice exposition. For seven days, the sound exposure was monitored alongside a questionnaire and a daily logbook. Students' responses to the Smart Watch's sound alarms showed a better perception of risk, but a change in safe behavior limited to 30% of the participants. The Smart Watch could be a promising noise awareness tool.

Summary:
Rationale/Purpose
University music students are often exposed to sound levels that exceed the occupational exposure limits of 85 dBA set by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, putting them at risk of loud music-induced hearing loss. Indeed, it is common for individual training sessions to be intensive and noisy, and music students are often unaware when they have exceeded the safe daily exposure limit. Therefore, it is essential for students to adopt protective measures to preserve their long-term auditory abilities. The goal of this project was to explore the potential of a Smart Watch capable of providing real-time information of sound level exposure to empower university music students in optimizing the allocation of their practice time, thereby mitigating the risk of hearing damage and enhancing their overall musical proficiency. The hypothesis of this study would be that the Smart Watch could estimate the music exposure and provide information to the music students, so that they could adopt good protection strategies.

Methods
This experimental study followed ten University music students that were using an Apple Watch in combination with a personal noise dosimeter during seven days to monitor sound exposure throughout their entire day of musical practice and social activities. The Smart Watch was worn all day and produced an alarm when the sound was higher than 80 dBA for 3 minutes, while the dosimeter was only used during musical practice to validate the Apple Watch measurements. Participants also completed a questionnaire on their sociodemographic information, musical practice habits and their perception and awareness of risks related to musical practice before data collection. At the end of each day, a daily logbook was kept to gather information about their practice, like the time and circumstance of the practice, as well as their perception of their exposure and how they adopt safe behaviors.

Results & Conclusions
The results revealed that music students direct reactions to the Smart Watch alarms both during practice and outside of practice, during their daily activities, were approximately 60% neutral behaviors (e.g., "I didn’t change anything once again," "Not surprised."); approximately 30% safe behaviors (e.g., "Increased awareness of noise exposure," "I put in earplugs," "Lowered the volume.") and approximately 2% negative behaviors (e.g., "Once again, I feel powerless and just continue playing as usual."). In most cases, the Smart Watch alarm corresponded to the maximum peak data measured by the dosimeter. But, our study revealed that these alerts could sometimes lack reliability, especially in term of intensity, compared to the continuous measurements provided by a professional dosimeter. Because of this, it would not replace a personal noise dosimeter to evaluate prolonged noise exposure. However, these findings suggests that the Apple Watch could still act as an alternative tool for raising awareness of loud music sound exposure and adopt safe behaviors.