Parent Perceptions of Children's Leisure and the Risk of Damaging Noise Exposure

The purpose of this study was to survey the attitudes of parents of adolescent children (with, and without, hearing impairment), with the following objectives: (1) compare perceptions of the parent groups regarding the risk of leisure-noise-related hearing injury; and (2) investigate how comfortable parents felt endorsing their child's participation in a range of everyday leisure activities, some which may involve noise exposure. Cross-sectional cohort study. Experimental group--parents of adolescents (aged 13-18 years) with hearing impairment (HI group) n = 53. Control group--parents of age-matched youths with non-impaired/'normal hearing' (NH group) n = 70. Rasch modelling was applied to evaluate the internal validity and reliability of the leisure attitudes items. Rasch-generated interval-level data and raw ordinal-level data were used to identify systematic differences between groups. Most parents (HI and NH groups) perceived leisure-noise to be a significant health risk for young people in general, but few perceived their own child to be at high risk. Parents in the HI group were significantly less comfortable overall, and with several specific leisure activities, than parents in the NH group but, conversely, were more comfortable with two activities. Concerns related to a variety of factors. Leisure-time activities provide a major opportunity for children to socialize and they are a crucial part of healthy emotional and physical development. Parent attitudes may influence children's participation. Parents may benefit from support in identifying and managing concerns about the impact of hearing impairment on their children's leisure participation.