Are You Listening? Male vs.

Female

Are You Listening? Male vs. Female

Tessier, Matthew : 4225867
White, Hailey: 4218793
Collee, Marissa: 4248294
Reece, Tabitha:4089049

Are You Listening? Male vs. Female

Table of Contents
3

Research Question and Hypothesis

Research Study Design

Research Data and Observations

Results and Discussion

Works Cited

2
Research Question and Hypothesis
Research Question: If we play a tinnitus noise, are males or females more likely to recognize the
sound?

Are You Listening? Male vs. Female

Hypothesis: Females will be more susceptible to tinnitus noise.

3
Research Study and Design
Our Naturalistic Observation will be conducted in the following steps:
Step 1: Download Sound Oasis app which will emit the tinnitus noise from the smart phone while we
conduct research.

Are You Listening? Male vs. Female

Step 2: Go to the Pen Centre and walk through numerous stores, stand in food lines and purposely talk
to employees to observe reaction closer to the noise.
Step 3: Have a third party outside of the research group to be the one to carry the device, therefore we
are able to put our full attention on observing. Conduct study 2 times in one hour intervals in order for
a variety of subjects.
Step 4: Look for people who seem to be agitated or uncomfortable after we walk in, listen for verbal
cues to others and/or ourselves, pay close attention to where their eyes are going, if they touch their
ears, and if they pick up or look at something that's electronic (looking for a source of the sound.)
Step 5: Record data on a smart phone or device in order for the environment to still look natural.

4
Research Data and Observations

DAY 1

DAY 2

Females who noticed

Females who didn't notice

Are You Listening? Male vs. Female

Males who noticed

Males who didn't notice

5
Results and Discussion
What we found:
Females noticed the sound more than males. J.D. Pearson and his fellow colleagues found that
women have more sensitive hearing than men at frequencies above 1000 (J.D. Pearson, 1995.)
Therefore, our hypothesis has been proven correct. However we did notice that males were more verbal
about it and females kept to themselves and seemed more irritated. A majority of the males who
noticed enquired about the sound to someone or physically looked for the destination from where the
noise was coming from. This makes sense to us because we had previously read about a study where 25

Are You Listening? Male vs. Female

people of each gender were tested and it was found that women had a lower comfortable listening level
than men (Unknown, 2010) Either gender from an older age group usually did not hear the noise in our
case, or show any sign of it because of, what we assume, is an issue with hearing loss, which is a major
confounding variable of our study. While women have typically been found to have superior highfrequency hearing, sociological changes that expose men and women to the same hazardous noise
levels may ultimately blur the gender distinction, and it may be expected that women, too, will
maintain less of their high-frequency hearing as they age (Unknown, 1997.)

6
Works Cited
Gender differences in a longitudinal study of ageassociated hearing loss. (1995) Retrieved October
28th 2014. from http://scitation.aip.org/content/asa/journal/jasa/97/2/10.1121/1.412231
Hearing Loss: Does Gender Play a Role? (1997, January 1). Retrieved October 28, 2014, from
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/719262_5
Webpage Advances in Gender and Education, 2 (2010), 13-21. Printed in the USA. (Pg 15) 2010
Montgomery Center for Research in Child & Adolescent Development. Retrieved October 28th
2014 http://www.mcrcad.org/2010-Sax-hearing.pdf

Are You Listening? Male vs. Female