2022 NHCA Annual Virtual Conference

The Apple Hearing Study is a study being conducted by the University of Michigan and Apple Inc. The study, which launched in November 2019, involves volunteer adults in the United States, and is collecting data on participants’ environmental sound exposures, headphone listening levels, and hearing ability. We have recently added additional measures to our ongoing longitudinal study. To date, we have measured >200 million hours of environmental noise and headphone audio exposures among our participants. Our results suggest that many participants in our study have the potential to be exposed to sound levels that exceed the World Health Organization recommended limits. Additionally, our participants complete regular pure tone audiometric tests and speech in noise tests, evaluations of potential temporary threshold shifts following high noise exposure, a tinnitus matching activity, and a variety of surveys assessing aspects of hearing and general health, behaviors, and knowledge. Going forward, we will compute combined exposures, i.e., exposures that integrate environmental noise data and headphone listening data. This will allow us to create, for the first time ever, national-level estimates of total daily noise exposure that include environmental and headphone exposures. We will then evaluate these levels against changes in hearing among those participants.