Coping with tinnitus during the COVID-19 pandemic (Beukes et al., 2021)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
<b>Purpose:</b> The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted normal operations of health care services, broad sectors of the economy, and the ability to socialize freely. For those with tinnitus, such changes can be factors in exacerbating tinnitus. The purpose of this study was to determine tinnitus help-seeking behavior, which resources individuals utilized to cope during the pandemic, and what additional support is desired.<b>Method: </b>An exploratory cross-sectional study design including 1,522 adults with tinnitus living in North America (Canada and the United States) was used. Data were collected through an online survey distributed by the American Tinnitus Association via e-mail. Free text from open-ended questions was analyzed using the automated content analysis. The responses to the structured questionnaire were analyzed using descriptive and nonparametric statistics.<b>Results: </b>Significantly less tinnitus support was sought during the pandemic, and very few respondents utilized tinnitus support networks during the pandemic at the time the survey was conducted. Nonetheless, seeking support during the pandemic was significantly associated with significantly less tinnitus distress. The most frequently utilized resources for coping during the pandemic were contacting family and friends, spending time outdoors or in nature, relaxation, and exercise. Such tools for coping were associated with significantly less tinnitus distress. The support requested and advice provided by participants to health care services had overlap. The main support needs related to managing tinnitus included addressing hearing loss, providing peer support, finding cures, and accessing trained and understanding health care providers to help. The advice for professionals related to tinnitus management included the need for cures, personalized support, addressing hearing loss, targeting the tinnitus percept, and providing more information about the condition.<b>Conclusions:</b> These findings provide suggestions on how to better support those with tinnitus at a time when health care is undergoing rapid changes. Findings can be used by stakeholders, clinical practitioners, and tinnitus support services to devise ways to work more effectively together to improve access to patient-driven, suitable, accessible, and evidence-based support.<br><b>Supplemental Material S1. </b>Survey questions. <br>Beukes, E. W., Onozuka, J., Brazell, T. P., & Manchaiah, V. (2021). Coping with tinnitus during the COVID-19 pandemic. <i>American Journal of Audiology</i>. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_AJA-20-00188
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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 | 0.000 | 0.013 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.017 | 0.001 |
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; both teacher heads agree on what is shown here.
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".