Analysis and Validation on Multi-dimensional Assessment for Comfort of In-Ear Headphones

The comfort of in-ear headphones is becoming more and more important nowadays as people use them more frequently and for longer periods of time. Past studies related to headphones have differed in their definitions of comfort, have not been uniform in their assessment methods, and have rarely considered sound related attributes and human psychological states. In this study, an attempt was made to create an in-ear headphone comfort assessment questionnaire containing four dimensions: physical, functional, acoustic and psychological, comprising 17 entries scored on a 7-point Likert scale format. A total of 20 participants (10 male and 10 female) participated in the experiment, each of whom took turns wearing five test headphones with different in-ear angles, and scored the test headphones one by one using the established multidimensional assessment questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed to further modify the structure of the questionnaire and to test its validity and reliability. The results showed that the amended questionnaire had good reliability and acceptable validity, but further refinement is still needed. This study provides a reference for a multidimensional approach to assessing the comfort of in-ear headphones.