Abstract:
Hearing Protective Devices (HPDs) are used to prevent noise exposure that could lead to hearing loss. However, reports have shown that most sawmill workers in Southwestern Nigeria, acquire different types and varied degrees of hearing loss due to non-use or improper use of hearing protective devices. Previous studies largely focused on interventions to remediate hearing loss with little emphasis on personal, dispositional and contextual factors that will influence hearing protective devices usage among sawmill workers. Therefore, this study was carried out to investigate personal (lifestyle, age and gender), dispositional (attitude to hearing protection) and contextual (level of education, length of service, peer influence and industrial noise exposure) factors as determinants of hearing protective devices usage among sawmill workers in Southwestern Nigeria.
The Theory of Planned Behaviour provided the framework, while the survey design was adopted. Purposive sampling technique was used to select 18 sawmills representing three sawmills per state based on their size, capacity of the equipment used and level of noise generated. Stratified random sampling technique was used to group all the participants in Southwestern Nigeria into four strata (operators, feeders, stackers and packers). Five hundred and fifty four sawmill workers working in high noise zones were selected using proportionate sample size technique (Ekiti - 90, Lagos - 90, Ogun - 93, Ondo - 90, Osun - 91 and Oyo - 100). Instruments used were Lifestyle Questionnaire (r= 0.78); Attitude to Hearing Protection (r= 0.77); Peer Influence (r= 0.82) and Hearing Protection Assessment (r= 0.86) scales. Data were subjected to Pearson product moment correlation and Multiple regression at 0.05 level of significance.
Participants’ age was 41.22±12.71 years and 81.6% were males. Lifestyle (r=0.43); attitude to hearing protection (r=0.40), peer influence (r=0.26) had positive relationship while level of education (r=0.07); age (r=0.06); gender (r=-0.03); length of service (r=-0.03) and industrial noise exposure (r=-0.02) had negative relationship with hearing protective devices usage respectively. There was joint contribution of the independent variables F(8;545)=16.22, P<.05accounting for 21.0% (adj. R2 =0.21) of the total variance to the usage of hearing protective devices. This indicates that the contribution of the independent variables to the dependent variable was significant and that other variables not included in this study may have accounted for the remaining variance. The relative contribution of the independent variables to hearing protective devices usage showed that attitude to hearing protection (β = 0.54) made the highest contribution to HPDs usage among respondents, length of service (β = 0.25); peer influence (β = 0.18); lifestyle (β = 0.02); gender (β = -0.17); level of education (β = -0.39); age (β = -0.55) and industrial noise exposure (β = -0.63) also contributed to HPDs usage.
Attitude to hearing protection, lifestyle and peer group influenced hearing protective devices usage among sawmill workers in Southwestern Nigeria. Workers in sawmill industries should improve on these factors to avert hearing loss.
