Assessing the Usefulness of Mobile Apps for Noise Management in Occupational Health and Safety: Quantitative Measurement and Expert Elicitation Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Overexposure to occupational noise can lead to hearing loss. Occupational noise mapping is conventionally performed with a calibrated sound level meter (SLM). With the rise of mobile apps, there is a growing number of SLM apps available on mobile phones. However, few studies have evaluated such apps for accuracy and usefulness to guide those with occupational noise detection needs in selecting a quality app. Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the accuracy and usefulness of SLM mobile apps to guide workplace health and safety professionals in determining these apps' suitability for assessing occupational noise exposure. Methods: The following three iOS apps were assessed: the NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) Sound Level Meter, Decibel X, and SoundMeter X apps. The selected apps were evaluated for their accuracy in measuring sound levels in low-, moderate-, and high-noise settings within both simulated environments and real-world environments by comparing them to a conventional SLM. The usefulness of the apps was then assessed by occupational health specialists using the Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS). Results: The NIOSH Sound Level Meter app accurately measured noise across a range of sound levels in both simulated settings and real-world settings. However, considerable variation was observed between readings. In comparison, the Decibel X and SoundMeter X apps showed more consistent readings but consistently underestimated noise levels, suggesting that they may pose a risk for workers. Nevertheless, none of the differences in sound measurements between the three apps and the conventional SLM were statistically significant (NIOSH Sound Level Meter: P=.78; Decibel X: P=.38; SoundMeter X: P=.40). The MARS scores for the three apps were all above 3.0, indicating the usefulness of these apps. Conclusions: Under the conditions of this study, the NIOSH Sound Level Meter app had equivalent accuracy to the calibrated SLM and a degree of usefulness according to the MARS. This suggests that the NIOSH Sound Level Meter app may be suitable for mapping noise levels as part of a monitoring strategy in workplaces. However, it is important to understand its limitations. Mobile apps should complement but not replace conventional SLMs when trying to assess occupational noise exposure risk. Our outcomes also suggest that the MARS tool may have limited applicability to measurement-based apps and may be more suited to information-based apps that collect, record, and store information.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".