Mensuração do ruído ambiental e ocupacional por aplicativos para dispositivos móveis: uma revisão bibliométrica

Abstract

Objective: To identify the scientific production on the measurement of environmental and/or occupational noise through applications for mobile devices. Methods: This is a bibliometric, descriptive and quantitative review. The electronic databases PUBMED, MEDLINE and Web of Science were consulted, including articles published in Portuguese and/or English in the last 10 years. Article references were also consulted in order to identify additional studies. The articles were characterized from a predefined script, which included author, year, place, objective of the study and journal of publication. All applications investigated in the included studies were characterized in terms of developer, operating system, version, compatibility, user rating and costs. Results and discussion: Seventeen articles were included in this bibliometric review, seven (7) from PUBMED, three (3) from web of science, two (2) from MEDLINE and five (5) additional articles located through the references of other articles. Among these articles, no studies conducted by Brazilian researchers were identified. All of the studies aimed to investigate the accuracy of applications for mobile devices in comparison with gold standard equipment (dosimeter) for measuring both environmental and occupational noise and were published in highly regarded scientific journals. Additionally, over the years, with the increase in the number of applications available, studies have contemplated investigating the accuracy of new applications, as well as including the calibration of mobile devices and the use of external microphones. Conclusion: The present study showed that the investigation of the measurement accuracy of applications for mobile devices is recent and of interest to international researchers. Additional studies are needed, as knowing the accuracy of applications for measuring noise can help with the use of these tools in the prevention and promotion of hearing health, as well as in epidemiological studies.