App measurements - Information

For help with the app or for additional information on this project, please contact isabelle.cossette1@mcgill.ca or hcp.app.cirmmt@mcgill.ca 

Safety - Physical harm

The dummy head kiosk will estimate how your ears are exposed to sound while you use headphones/earphones in order to assess if your hearing is at risk.  This is intended as an awareness and educational tool that provides an estimation of noise exposure based on presented sound levels of the individual using the kiosk. It is not a diagnosis tool. 

In complement, you may get an estimation of the age of your ears by assessing your noise exposure during music and non-music activities using our cell app.   

The current age of your ears is calculated by comparing your age to statistical data of a normal population (from ISO 1999). The analysis will be done based on the assumption that your hearing is statistically normal for your age. The audiogram data that you provided will be used to predict the current age of your ears. The app does not make any diagnosis and cannot detect or predict existing hearing problems.

Privacy information

Anonymous data will be collected for research purposes and stored on a password protected server which only the research team has access. This has been approved by the Research Ethics Board of McGill University. Collected data will be anonymized by providing a random identifier, unique per user using the app (e.g.: “SJD59DSF345”). The identifier is created the first time a user opens the app and creates its profile. The unique identifier can also be re-used to allow a user to retrieve its profile on the kiosk app (another device part of the research project that allows measurements of sound levels used with the user’s personal listening devices).  

Collected data associated to the random unique identifier include: Age, gender, average dBA levels from recordings classified by categories and activities (e.g., Commute, concert, etc.), devices’ model/brand,  and geo-locations of scores, *if* the user activated it. All the personal information of a user (age, geolocation, etc.) is tied to a random unique identifier, therefore is anonymized information.

No financial information stored.

Only researchers will have access to the data via a password protected server. The app itself will not have any login at all.