title: Elementary school children's knowledge and intended behavior towards hearing conservation.
abstract: The purposes of the study were to investigate children's knowledge about hearing conservation, the types of protective behaviors they would adopt towards noise, the agreement between children's knowledge and intended behaviors in hearing protection, and reasons why they would not take any protective action against noise. A questionnaire was administered to 479 4 th and 5 th graders in their school classrooms. Results indicated that children scored low (62.01%) on this hearing conservation questionnaire. They scored the highest in strategies of hearing protection (69.89%), followed by their knowledge in general hearing health (62.56%) and noise hazards (49.65%). Only 55% of the children knew that hearing protective devices could protect them against noise. Approximately 28% of the children did not intend to adopt any protective behavior towards noise and the major reason for this was a lack of knowledge. Children's knowledge and their noise-protective behavior were correlated ( P < 0.05). However, possessing knowledge did not guarantee that children would adopt such behaviors when they were exposed to loud sounds. Hence, it is important to increase children's knowledge about hearing protection and hazardous noise as well as to encourage actual protective actions.
authors.affiliation: National Kaohsiung Normal University, Taiwan. chenhc@nknucc.nknu.edu.tw
authors.forename: Hsiaochuan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Minju
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Jiuhunhwa
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wei
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D004430:Ear Protective Devices; D005260:Female; D015438:Health Behavior; D006266:Health Education / Q000379:methods; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006317:Hearing Loss, Noise-Induced / Q000209:etiology / Q000517:prevention & control*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012572:School Health Services; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires