First of all, thank you for helping us by gathering sound and heart rate data in New York during the 2022 study trip! Your data significantly improves our understanding of the impact of sound health.
Data Collection Results
The following shows some insights into the data you have collected. If you have any questions or would like your own copy of your data, feel free to write me on jych@eriksholm.com.
Amount of data collected
Every 20 seconds, the hearing aids sends estimates of the sound environment to the iPhone via Bluetooth. Your heart rate is then estimated as the mean heart rate from -5 seconds to +5 seconds centered on each sample of the sound environment. We can therefore simply count the number of data logs to learn how many hours of data gathering (i.e. logging) you have performed. The figure below shows how this is distributed over the days during the trip with colors indicate Teams. Note, the heart rate data is normalized so that the numbers indicate a %-change from your individual mean heart rate across the whole trip.
Not surprising, you collected more data on the 21st and 22nd, probably because you learned that the first competition was concerned with the total amount of data collected on the 20th. On the 24th, some of you (Team BOOY) had stopped collecting data as the data collection on this day was not associated with any competition.
Noise accumulation and stress
Next, we look at the noise dose you accumulated each day of the trip. Being in loud sound environments for longer periods of time increase the total noise dose you are exposed to. The noise dose is calculated as the accumulated noise in relation to a 8 hour working day. This means that 100% is the recommended maximum to avoid occupational health effects from noise. For example, the limit of 100% is reached in 4 hours if you are exposed to 88 dBA noise and in only 1 hour if the noise is constant 94 dBA.
The average noise accumulation represents the common exposure across all Audio Explorers. Shared events (for example our dinners) therefore contributes more to the accumulation than individual noisy events (some of you might have been in more noisy environments during free time than others). Nevertheless, the noise dose and the stress levels (color from green to red) represent expected levels when visiting New York and participating in the Audio Explorers study trip!
We can also look at the contribution to the shared noise dose from each team individually. This is shown in the bottom plot. When the accumulation seems to drop, this indicate that one or more team members stopped gathering data (maybe due to connectivity issues).
Evidently, the most noisy and stressing day was the 23rd. This makes sense since this was the day we went to the amusement park at Coney Island and also the day most of you enjoyed NY nightlife!
Maps
We can also inspect how the sounds you experienced in New York were located (and also track where you went). Zoom in and see what sound you logged where you went. Note: to reduce the amount of GPS noise each dot represents the median (lon, lat) coordinate across 1 minute corresponding to 3 samples.
Sound Loudness, sound Clarity, and Stress
Check the box for which data you would like to see.
Individual Team contribution and days
Time-series
Sound and stress fluctuates throughout the day with the activities we perform. It is therefore interesting to inspect the time-series of these data to reflect back on particular events and their impact on sound-induced stress.
