A survey of College Students' KAP on hearing loss caused by recreational noise

  Objective  To analyze the current situation of college students' knowledge, attitude and practice(KAP)about hearing loss caused by recreational noise, and provide scientific basis for college students' hearing health education.

  Methods  During March to April 2020, 455 students from a comprehensive university were surveyed by the "questionnaire star" network platform.The students' basic information, hearing health knowledge, hearing health beliefs and hearing related behaviors were collected.The influence of hearing health beliefs on hearing loss related behaviors was analyzed using ordered logistic regression.

  Results  Totally 452 valid questionnaires were received with recovery rate of 99.34%;187 college students(41.4%)thought that they had some degree of hearing loss; 30.1% of college students listened to the music with earphones for more than 60 minutes every day, 7.1% of them set the volume to exceed 60% of the maximum volume, and 42.0% of them would sleep with earphones listening to music or radio.Only 8.4% of the students knew the threshold of hearing loss caused by long-term exposure to noise, and 15.0% of the students knew that the hearing loss caused by noise was incurable.Medical students had a higher awareness rate of noise hazard knowledge and scores on hearing health knowledge(P < 0.05), while senior undergraduate students had a higher score on hearing health knowledge(P < 0.05).The score of "self-efficacy" dimension in the hearing health belief scale was positively correlated with the frequency of wearing earphones every day, the use time of wearing earphones every day, the probability of increasing the volume of earphones in a noisy environment, and the frequency of listening to music or radio to sleep(OR=1.056 - 1.083, P < 0.05);The dimension of "perceived change disorder" was negatively correlated with the frequency of wearing earphones every day(OR=0.967, P < 0.05).

  Conclusions  The college students' cognition of hearing health knowledge and the harm of recreational noise was insufficient, and their hearing health beliefs need to be improved.There was a correlation between hearing health beliefs and hearing loss related behaviors.We should strengthen the health education of college students, especially non-medical college students, to promote them to change their bad hearing loss related behaviors and reduce the risk of hearing loss.