Tinnitus: Your Hearing Tests and Questionnaires as Research Data

Every figure in this guide comes from a published source, linked where it appears and kept in CureCircle's evidence base with the source's own words. It is not medical advice. Read on 7 November 2026.

Tinnitus is heard by one person only. Nobody else can measure how loud it is, when it gets worse, or how much it costs in sleep and concentration, so research depends on what people with tinnitus report, ideally in the same validated questionnaires, repeated over time, beside a hearing test. Sound therapy, hearing aids, counselling and apps all claim to help; which of them helped whom is the question research is still answering.

How many people live with it

A systematic review in JAMA Neurology concluded that tinnitus affects more than 740 million adults globally, and found a pooled rate of 1,164 new cases per 100,000 person-years.

The records worth keeping

NICE's 2020 guideline on tinnitus describes the tests and questionnaires that leave records:

• A hearing test: NICE says to offer an audiological assessment to people with tinnitus. The audiogram it produces is a precise, comparable record.
• The Tinnitus Functional Index, a questionnaire NICE suggests to assess how tinnitus affects adults. Repeated scores show whether a treatment made a difference.
• A sleep questionnaire such as the Insomnia Severity Index, when tinnitus disturbs sleep.
• An MRI in some cases, for unilateral or asymmetrical tinnitus.

If you do not have your audiogram or clinic letters, ask your audiology service for a copy.

What sharing it is worth

CureCircle values every contribution with a public benchmark built from what health data has sold for. A complete tinnitus story with the records the guideline lists comes to about $98 per licence on the benchmark today. Every line and its source is on the tinnitus page.

A licence is not a one-off sale: the same de-identified story can be licensed to several research teams, and you earn a share each time.

How to share it

You start by writing what you live with in your own words; a few quick questions follow, then an AI interviewer asks about the details only you know, such as what makes it louder and what eases it, and you rate every treatment you tried, from hearing aids and sound therapy to counselling and apps. You can add your audiogram and clinic letters as PDFs or photos, and the AI reads them into your own medical file. Before anything is shared, you read the de-identified summary and decide.

Start your story, or read what your health data is worth first.