Identifying barriers and facilitators of hearing protection use in early-career musicians: a basis for designing interventions to promote uptake and sustained use

Abstract

Objective

The current study aimed to: i) determine the patterns of hearing protection device (HPD) use in early-career musicians, ii) identify barriers to and facilitators of HPD use, and iii) use the Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW) to develop an intervention to increase uptake and sustained use of HPDs.

Design

A mixed-methods approach using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews.

Study sample

Eighty early-career musicians (age range = 18–26 years; women n = 39), across all categories of musical instrument.

Results

42.5% percent of participants reported using HPDs at least once a week, 35% less than once a week, and 22.5% reported never using HPDs for music-related activities. Six barriers and four facilitators of HPD use were identified. Barriers include the impact of HPDs on listening to music and performing, and a lack of concern about noise exposure. Barriers/facilitators were mapped onto the Theoretical Domains Framework. Following the systematic process of the BCW, our proposed intervention strategies are based on ‘Environmental Restructuring’, such as providing prompts to increase awareness of noisy settings, and ‘Persuasion/Modelling’, such as providing credible role models.

Conclusions

For the first time, the present study demonstrates the use of the BCW for designing interventions in the context of hearing conservation.

Keywords:

• Hearing loss
• tinnitus
• hearing protection
• interventions
• behaviour change

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 NB. One participant noted equal use of foam and musicians’ earplugs, hence total numbers of participants using HPDs across the different types of HPD equals 63, despite only 62 participants reporting HPD use.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Colt Foundation and received support from the Medical Research Council UK [MR/L003589/1], the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre, and the NIHR Greater Manchester Patient Safety Translational Research Centre.