Original articleMP3 Players and Hearing Loss: Adolescents’ Perceptions of Loud Music and Hearing Conservation
Section snippets
Participants
Students from 2 secondary school communities, 1 urban and 1 rural, were invited to participate in 8 focus-group discussions. Because a summary of the literature on correlates of young people’s exposure to loud music12 identified 3 main sociodemographic correlates of risk and protective behaviors (age, educational level, and sex) we chose these selection criteria: 1) age 12 to 14 years and 15 to 18 years; 2) level of education, consisting of pre-university education and pre-vocational education;
Possession and Use of MP3
All adolescents in the 3 15-to-18-year-old groups at the pre-vocational schools had an MP3 player, which they normally set at maximum volume: “My earphones have already exploded,” “So have mine—4 of them.” Unlike most of the girls in the female group in the urban area, most adolescents in the other 2 groups (male students from the urban area and students of both sexes from the rural area) said they used their players very often: “I always listen, all kinds of music at maximum volume,” “All day,
Discussion
This study, which is the first to explore adolescents’ behaviors and opinions about exposure to loud music from MP3 players, suggests that interventions to prevent hearing loss should be targeted at all adolescent groups. Extra attention should be given to older male students and students from pre-vocational education, because they reported greater exposure to music at maximum volumes.
Our finding that male students reported greater exposure than female students confirms the results of earlier
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Supported by a grant (#2100.0107) from the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw) Prevention Research Program. The work was done entirely independently of the funder.