Poll: Have You Ever Attended a Loud Event (After the Onset of Tinnitus) and Regretted It?

This poll will not allow us to see whether one can reduce one's chances of recovery (or increase one's chances of getting a permanent spike at some future date) by attending loud events. It is still interesting what the results are going to be.

Loud events are events like weddings, concerts, pubs where loud music is playing, movie theater, etc.

 

No I haven't

 

may be you can more options like 1) attended with plugs 2) without plugs 3) spike lasted 1 months 4 ) 3 month or greater
What's your thought on these options ?

 

If a spike lasted one month and then ended, then that's a temporary spike, and the poll is about permanent spikes. I mentioned "1 month" because I was thinking about someone who has had a spike for more than a month and the spike is still ongoing. There is a good chance that some serious damage had been done, in that case (and a chance that this will end up being permanent).

Different people have something different in mind when they read the word "loud event". It is possible that someone attends a loud event with earplugs gets exposed to as much noise (in terms of dB) as someone who attends a less loud event. Perhaps the people who had been wearing earplugs and then still regretted attending a loud event could post a comment about it.

 

If your spike ended up being temporary, then please choose the option "I attended a loud event and then was fine afterwards"

 

I would strongly advise to not take any conclussions from this. All factors are so different and hard to measure. For instance, time between first onder of T and attendance of event, use of earplugs, time and overal decibels.

 

But there's confirmation bias! I can look at this pool - all people who don't regret going and feel good about decisions I make.

And then Bill can look at the results and all the people who got an increase and feel good about decisions he makes.


It's like with all statistics - very useful to confirm our beliefs.

 

I was at a family bbq and we had music playing from an amazon echo speaker, later on at night it got a bit louder but not crazy loud. I had a good time and my t stayed the same. I have been to concerts post t and have used plugs and been fine also, haven't been to one in a while now though.

I can't say i have had a spike either, unless fleeting t counts.

 

I would not place weddings, pubs and theaters in the same category as concerts... The risk is significantly different

 

I disagree. The point of this poll was not to find out the exact probability of getting a permanent spike. The point was to find out whether that probability is relatively high. I would say that when it comes to a PERMANENT spike, any probability above 5%-15% is HIGH. (An actual Russian Roulette gives one a probability of 14% = 1/7 of being shot in the head.) It would be absolutely insane to risk a Permanent spike (=poisoning the remainder of one's life, or at least the months or years that it might take to habituate) for an event that lasts a couple of hours.

Eight out of 22 who attended the loud event got a PERMANENT spike, that's more than a third. We can't use this to conclude that the risk is close to 30%. But we CAN use this information to say that the results of this poll are consistent with the risk of a permanent spike being 10% or greater.

 

What is see in this pool: even on a biased sample consisting of people with most bothersome form of tinnitus that never fully habituated (they're on this forum so they never did) over 63% of people who decided to partake in loud events (possibly many) never got an increase in their tinnitus. I believe this probability would be much higher was the sample unbiased.

It is therefore true that you're likely to lead normal live, with occasional noise exposure even with tinnitus.

Data is a very bad witness, it'll tell you what you want to hear.

 

Every person who is reading this thread (who made an account on this site) is part of the population that voted. So you should not care about the population of tinnitus sufferers, you ought to care about the subset of that population that is the people on this forum.

I read (I did a quick search, but unfortunately couldn't find the link) that something like two thirds of smokers never experience any health problems as a result of smoking. Yet the fact that one third get serious problems is enough to convince many people that smoking is a bad idea.

Do you think that a 5% risk of a Permanent/Lifetime T spike (the cost) is worth the benefit associated with enjoying a loud event for a few hours? Do you think that if the risk were to be actually much lower than 5% (say 1% or less) there would be a high chance of us observing more than 35% of our sample with 22 observations reporting a permanent spike?

 

It is a relatively small sample with only 24 observations (there is a total of 32 observations there, but 8 people haven't attended loud events, so they don't count). You will be surprised to find out that statisticians would refer to a sample with 30 or more observations as a "large sample:"
"...at least when large samples are used, such as N ≥ 30."

We are trying to estimate population proportion. Condition 3 on page 106 of
https://projecteuclid.org/download/pdf_1/euclid.ss/1009213286
states that confidence intervals may be used if n*p_hat>5, where p_hat is the sample proportion (in our case the proportion in our sample who got a permanent spike). According to the paper above, condition 3 is a statement that can be found in some popular stats textbooks. In our case n*p_hat = 24*8/24 = 8>5. The paper goes on to critisize this condition. I will come back to their critique momentarily. If that condition 3 is true, then we can use the confidence interval calculators on
http://www.sample-size.net/confidence-interval-proportion/
I set N = 24, x = 8, and CL = 99. I am looking for a 99% confidence interval. The online calculator is providing us with two sets of confidence intervals. One is
Lower bound = 0.119
Upper bound = 0.614
The other one is
Lower bound = P - (Zα*SEM) = 0.085
Upper bound = P + (Zα*SEM) = 0.581
The above are 99% confidence intervals. For an interpretation of the meaning of a confidence interval, see
http://www.mathbootcamps.com/interpreting-confidence-intervals/
To paraphrase, 99% of the time, the TRUE population proportion (of the fraction of people who will get a Permanent spike after attending a noisy event) will be between 8.5% and 58% (I am using the second interval above). 1% of the time, it will not. We are 99% confident that the fraction of tinnitus sufferers who will get a permanent spike after attending a loud event is between 8.5% and 58%. This statement takes the sample size into account. As a result of that relatively small sample size, we ended up with a 99% confidence interval that is wider.

 

You're confusing thing. You're looking at a probability that person X that participated in N (possibly large N) loud events got a permanent spike.

You're also disregarding the type of the event. What loud means? My guitar is pretty loud. Nightclubs are loud too.

 

Good points. There are certainly weaknesses, but I still think the poll is informative.

I think people know what "loud" means (e.g., loud music at a pub, concert, wedding, etc.)

Taking into account the fact that just because someone hasn't gotten a spike after attending one event doesn't mean that they won't get a permanent spike if they keep attending loud events, means that the 16 out of 24 people who said they didn't get a spike, might eventually get it. Us ignoring this fact causes us to Underestimate the true fraction of the people who will end up with permanent spikes. Also, note that the question specifically talked about ONE event.

In any case, perhaps the following will work for you: "We are 90%-99% confident that the fraction of tinnitus sufferers who will get a permanent spike after getting into a habit of attending a loud events is between 8.5% and 58%."

 

@Bill Bauer, I know this is an old thread but I just wanted to post my experience.

I have been suffering from tinnitus and hyperacusis from two months. My tinnitus has been gradually getting worse but the hyperacusis was manageable.

However, yesterday I stupidly went to a short walk in the mall and then for 30 minutes in a cafe which played loud music - 70-75 dB according to my app. All which time I had earplugs inserted quite well. I even went for a 5 minute break to check on them and reinsert them.

Boy how I regret that - now my tinnitus sounds are louder and much more intrusive and my hyperacusis is through the roof. Sound distortions are way more and my sensitivity dropped significantly.

 

@GoatSheep, hey man.

I read about your hyperacusis setback caused by the music in the store. Did you get better? Did you have some distortions beforehand?

Did your tinnitus spike also from that?

 

No, it hasn’t improved. Thankfully, I’ve never had distortions. My tinnitus has not spiked from the incident. My reactive tinnitus that had nearly disappeared has come back to a degree.