Examining sound levels across different time scales measured from body-worn dosimeters

Studies are increasingly investigating listeners' acoustic environments using real-world data collection methods to personalize interventions for hearing loss and understand individual differences in intervention outcomes. A pressing methods question is the extent to which the time scale of the sample and number of sampling periods need to be considered. The purpose of this study was to characterize the extent to which the sound levels in a listener's vicinity, one common measure of acoustic environments, change across different time scales. Listeners wore a personal noise dosimeter continuously for one-week sampling periods at three time points. The effects of season, week, day of the week, and time of day on acoustic environment demand (proportion of samples ≥ 40 dB LAeq and mean sound levels for samples ≥ 40 dB LAeq) and diversity (the distribution of LAeq values, quantified by entropy) were characterized. Acoustic environment demand and diversity were relatively similar across seasons and weeks but varied more between days and across the day. Results suggest that a single one-week sampling period, collected at any time of year but balanced across days of the week and time of day, may capture sufficient information about a listener's acoustic environments to inform decisions about interventions.