Proposal for research on binaural beats - to reduce stress

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I've been using binaural beats since last January, and have found them noticeably helpful in ways not true for relaxing music, hypnotherapy etc. Sometime during the summer, I started to wonder just how effective this stuff is on a short term and long term basis, and began looking for a way to do a study. I have come to the conclusion that I am not going to grad school after all in the near future (couldn't find anyone to study under, and don't have money to just go back to school part time and check profs out), and so don't have access to an ethics committee. However, I think the research should still be done.

So, how would you guys like to be my ethics committee?

I have a proposal here: http://www.anemonecerridwen.net/bbbe.php
and I have two 30 minute mp3 files generated from sbagen (which some people here use - this is where I found out about it). One has gurgling water sounds without binaural beats; the other one has both. I have gotten a friend who is not on WP to label one A and the other B (and she had better remember which is which).

I can give each individual subject an mp3 with a unique number, so no one would know whether they are A or B group until it's over. Subjects would do a pretest questionnaire (stress and autism related items), listen for 30 minutes a day for 30 days using headphones (binaural beats won't work properly without them) then do a posttest, then analyze, post raw data if people agree, post pdf of results and have people signal boost, discuss etc. And after that if people wanted to redo a variation on the posttest from time to time to see long term results, we could do that too.

In other words, who wants to do a double-blind test of binaural beats that would take about a month to do and possibly find out whether this particular treatment helps with stress? (The version I'm using is for stress - there are other frequencies that are better for concentration and other things.)

We need healthier alternatives to medications, and we need them properly researched, though anecdotal evidence is better than nothing for people who are looking for alternatives. And, quite frankly, we need more autism research done by autistic people. Are we supposed to wait patiently until we have a critical mass of fully qualified fully paid autistic autism researchers? How long is that going to take????

So, what do you think?

(My academic qualifications are BSc/MSc in geology; BSc in psychology, plus a whole ton of reading since then.)

You can PM me if you want to sign up.

It's inspirational that you are trying to take this on yourself without a university or something else to back you up. No time atm to read consent form fully, but I've love to participate if I fit your criteria as a subject.

I think double blind may be hard, as binaural beats will probably be noticeable by most people.

Semi-blind, then?

I think the beats are only barely audible over the burbling water sounds, if that, and only if you know what they sound like. I'm hoping that the control will be close enough that if people don't *try* to figure out which group they're in, it won't bias the results. Of course, there are people here who could probably hack the files to figure it out, but let's just ask them nicely not to.

bump

i dont want to end up listening to just bubbling water to no end with no benefit lol. i would do it to try out the binaural beats.

You don't have any sort of consent form. You need to have one of those for each participant, I guess one you can create for an online environment. I suppose that's what your pm could be, you send each person here who pm's you saying that they want to participate, and then you send them the blurb and that they should respond 'I agree to participate in the research' or 'I don't agree to participate', and have that be that. You'll want a backup of all of those discussions too, not just have them floating in your WP account. (I thinking about the ability for you to publish this once you're done. Credibility is everything. The psychological profession has a stick up its arse for propriety. Of course whether an experiment is ethical or not is far more important than propriety, but you need to keep everything well organized and maintained so that people can track what you've done. If this were just a simple form to fill out once I'd say that that's not really necessary, or even if it were just a 1 time listen, but if you expect someone to do this for a whole month you really need to give each participant an outline described specifically for them.)

Secondly, I think it's quite important for a participant's safety but could also be for the nature of the experiment itself, that a list of when it is or when it isn't appropriate to listen to this. Eg: Since it involves stereo some people might want to listen to it, say, on their commute to work each day. This would be dangerous, especially if we do think that binaural beats can change brainwaves. Also could be dangerous if they block their hearing while driving. Furthermore, the act of driving might be too active for what you're looking for. Also, someone might think 'hey, my car's in stereo, I can hear things from separate sides of it when I listen to music that's designed that way, therefore I can listen to it in the car'. (You did a pretty good job of saying this isn't acceptable, but I still feel like you should specify that a room or area with good stereo isn't good enough.)

You could consider having each participant jot down when they start and stop each session also, perhaps create a form that the person can print off (or a pdf they can fill out) with a column for start and stop time, enumerating lines from 1 to 30 for 30 sessions/days. This will give you at least some assurance that they actually did what they said they were going to do. It will also let you know if someone skipped a session one day due to any number of circumstances. Some people might peter off in listening to it, and while ideally you don't want that, if you don't manage to find enough people to do this, you're going to need those participant's results regardless.


I know that you've written the blurb explaining what this does and everything, I just want you to make sure that that's more of a proposal. It by itself isn't very good informed consent. The informed consent, while it should go into the nature of the experiment itself, doesn't need that much detail regarding references and such (although it certainly could), but it needs to go into more detail as to what you expect from each participant.

As alluded to before, what sort of activity would be acceptable to do while listening to this? Can I do dishes listening to this? Gardening? Reading? Watching TV? Obviously anything involving driving or machinery is completely unacceptable for safety reasons. Would even walking while listening to this be hazardous? What if I like to sit outside and listen but my house is next to a noisy highway, would that interfere?

Is it important to listen to this at the same time everyday? Can I listen to it under the effects of alcohol or other drugs I may have to take that knowingly affect my mind in some way?

That's it for now, I'm sure I'll have more input later whether you want it or not. :-p

Note: for some reason I'm thinking that most proposals include a copy of the consent form and instructions you plan on using. I realize now I said 'yes' in your poll, but really if I'm going to act like someone on a research ethics board, I should have clicked 'need more info' I need to see the consent forms and instructions you'll be giving to each participant, BEFORE you start getting people to do this.

Lots of good points, and I hadn't thought of alcohol or drugs. I have no idea what to say about that. Would you drink while meditating? Medications are normal for people who take them, and presumably they'd be taking them throughout the period (unless it's short term pain killers?) Long term medications shouldn't be a problem. Noisy environments might be a problem (crank up the volume?) but it depends on where you are most relaxed. I always listen on the way to bed, while in bed. Easiest for me. Other people sit somewhere quiet and relaxing during the day.

I was under the impression I said you should only listen to it somewhere you can safely fall asleep (since you might) but maybe I didn't?

I know perfectly well I won't be able to publish in a journal, because no ethics committee. The fanciest consent form in the world probably won't change that. My concern is that I present the issue properly to participants, so no one gets hurt.

And yeah, of course people will only want to do it if they're in the control condition. But how do you know if it's really effective if everyone's in the control condition? I guess when enough people are using this stuff, then more people will be curious about just what is going on. So if you just want to try binaural beats, there are plenty of free samples online, and you can download sbagen if you want to code your own sequences. (Something I'm not really an expert on, but there are probably plenty of people here who know lots about it.)

I tried out some of the ones easily available online.
They made my eyes sting and water, even ones with entirely different sound & promised effect.
Meh.

Yeah you did suggest to listen to it at night where you could fall asleep. I took that as just a suggestion though, should make it a statement, saying it might make you sleepy or something therefore before bedtime and while immobile is a good time to listen to it.

Really sucks that you can't just use the local uni's REB. It's not like you're asking them to pay you if you're willing to go about doing it yourself and it seems like you don't need lab space either.
Wish I had contacts for you to help this situation out, but alas I burned all my bridges connecting me to psychological research.

It seems a lot of us go into psychology, but not so many are able to see it through. I burned out in the final stretch and got a general degree instead of an honours one, and had to drop the idea of grad school.

But I'm kind of fed up with the whole ethics committee thing. It ends up making research too exclusive, so that those within the system get to decide what to study, which isn't ethical either. Not that I think ethics don't matter. They do, a lot.

Dilemma.

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I sort of get some kind of calm rush from binaural and asmr stuff, depends from video to video, the more sexual binaural stuff is interesting, doesn't really do it for me but it's a weird feeling.

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