Promoting ear plugs at music events: evaluation of the Celebrate Safe approach

Abstract

Objective: The Celebrate Safe approach concerns a collaboration between public health organisations and music event/venue organisers to stimulate health promotion interventions in nightlife settings and at music events. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the Celebrate Safe approach with regard to its impact on use of ear plugs among visitors of music events.Design: A pre-registered cluster-randomized controlled trial conducted at music events throughout the Netherlands (k=20). In the experimental condition, event organisers were asked to share an online pre-event message concerning ear plugs, clearly indicate where visitors could buy ear plugs, and sell ear plugs at busy locations on the premises. Visitors were stimulated to wear ear plugs by means of an 'ear check' at the beginning of the event.Study sample: Observations to assess whether event visitors wear ear plugs (N=3836).Results: A multilevel model, taking into account nesting of visitors within events, revealed that use of ear plugs at music events in the experimental condition was higher in comparison to events in the control condition (23% vs. 14%, OR=1.9, 95%CI 1.2-3.0, p = 0.004).Conclusions: The Celebrate Safe approach has a positive impact on use of ear plugs among visitors of music events.

Promoting ear plugs at music events: evaluation of the Celebrate Safe approach

“…In the control condition, event organisers were not asked to do so. This study was pre-registered at the Open Science framework (Crutzen and Noijen 2019) to increase research transparency and reduce publication bias (Munro and Prendergast 2019). This study was approved by the Ethics Review Committee (FHML-REC/2019/019) and falls outside the scope of the Dutch Medical Research Involving Human Subjects Act (WMO).…”