Abstract:
The growing public concern around leisure noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) among youth and young people highlights the importance of implementing hearing loss prevention strategies among this demographic. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this trend is present in New Zealand. However, there is no evidence of NIHL and hearing conservation studies on Pasifika youth (in Aotearoa and the Pasifika region). Primary data from a survey among Pasifika University students suggest they held ill-informed perceptions and negatively shaped norms related to noise and the value of hearing. This provided the premise for providing a hearing conservation programme for this demographic.
This research aimed to deliver an adapted version of the Dangerous Decibels (DD) programme towards improving Pasifika University students’ knowledge, attitudes and behaviours towards hearing, loud sounds and hearing conservation. This research adopted a pre-and post-test design to examine the effect of the programme on Pasifika students. A purposive sample of 25 Pasifika students enrolled at the University of Auckland in 2021 were recruited for this study. The research instruments used in this study involved the adapted DD programme and a pre and post-training questionnaire. Before analysis, a distribution test was conducted on the data collected. This test led to the use of Wilcoxon signed-ranks test to examine the null hypothesis (that there were no differences between the pre-training and post-training scores).
The results showed that the most frequent leisure noise activity participants were exposed to in the last three months was ‘Listening to loud sounds through headphones for loud music’ (92%). There was a general improvement in the average total and modules scores (p<0.05) of the DD training (except for Module 5 and 6 of the DD programme). Module 5 showed no significant improvement (p= 0.317) while Module 6 showed marginal improvement (p= 0.058). Despite this, the DD programme training did generally help improve Pasifika students’ knowledge, attitudes and behaviours. This study serves as a foundation for future research in hearing conservation behaviours among Pasifika youth. The use of Pasifika health models to inform the future adaption of the DD programme can also be beneficial.