Statistical analysis of hearing loss among navy personnel

Hearing loss is one of the most common disabilities among sailors. Service members are posted to a variety of stations. Many of these posts have high noise levels, and particular ratings have high exposure. If assignments of higher risk can be identified, then focused prevention programs can be implemented. The focus of this study was to determine how hearing loss relates to service time spent aboard ships. To investigate which duty stations and ratings are at high risk for hearing loss, this study looked at medical hearing test records for nearly 268,000 enlisted sailors over the period of 1979 to 2004. Using both logistic and logarithmic binomial analyses, the study found that enlisted sailors who spent one-half of a 30-year Navy career assigned to a surface warship had a 13-percentage point higher probability of leaving the service with a reduction in the ability to hear, compared with someone who spent his or her whole career in a shore billet. If the same sailor spent two-thirds of his or her 30-year Navy career assigned to a surface warship, then the probability of hearing loss at the end of his or her career would increase by another 5 percentage points.