Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Promoting Increased Use of Ear Protectors in Noise Through Information Feedback

1980; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 22; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/001872088002200108

1547-8181

Dov Zohar, Alexander Cohen, Naomi Azar,

Hearing Impairment and Communication

Workers in a noisy department of a metal fabrication plant took hearing tests before and at the end of their workshifts to ascertain the extent of temporary hearing losses that occurred with and without earplugs being worn. This information was fed back to individual workers as a means for motivating greater use of ear protectors issued for hearing conservation purposes. Subsequent observations of earplug users in this department for 5 months showed a steady increase, attaining a level of 85 -90%. No more than 10% of the workers in another noisy department in the same plant, serving as a control group, wore earplugs over the same 5-month period after being given a standard lecture on hearing conservation in noise, later augmented by disciplinary threats. The effectiveness of the feedback technique in promoting earplug usage was explained as a two-stage process involving individual reinforcement, and subsequent group adoption of new norms for accepted behavior.