Perceptions, Beliefs, and Attitudes Toward Various Hearing Conservation Approaches Reported by Indiana College Agriculture Students

Noise-induced hearing loss is a major public health challenge for agricultural communities. However, there is limited hearing conservation research addressing the issue, especially for youth and young adults. The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions and practices of Indiana undergraduate students who lived or worked on a farm. The students were asked to rank the most common and current hearing conservation educational approaches, including in-person classroom presentation, mailers, and technology-based approaches, i.e., computer-based training, interactive websites, static websites, and smartphone noise-measuring applications (apps). A total of 91 undergraduate students enrolled in agriculture classes at four Indiana higher educational institutions participated in the study. They completed a sociodemographic and farm activity survey, followed by a 30-minute in-person presentation on hearing health conservation. After the presentation, each participant completed a questionnaire that included items about their perceptions of the feasibility, sustainability, rankings, and preferences of the various educational approaches discussed in the presentation. Participants ranked the noise-measuring app and in-person classroom presentation as their most preferred educational approaches for hearing conservation (39% and 28%, respectively). They identified multiple features of these two intervention approaches as beneficial. Sixty-four percent of participants indicated that a combination of approaches could influence hearing protection use and should include in-person classroom presentation and one of the technology-based approaches (noise-measuring apps, 37.3%). These findings are expected to assist health interventionists and program designers in developing future hearing protection education programs for farm youth, who may otherwise lack access to resources for preventing premature hearing loss due to loud noise exposure.