Acoustic comfort in long-term care facilities based on listening impressions from normal hearing individuals

Abstract

As the population of elderly people increases, the need for long-term care facilities also increases. For elderly individuals, acoustic comfort is as important as thermal and visual comfort. The purpose of this research is to study the preference of acoustic comfort through a listening evaluation with normal hearing people as the subjects. The listening evaluation was based on 20 sound samples recorded in two Taiwanese long-term care facilities and a university dormitory. Sixty-six architectural students participated in listening evaluation. Semantic differential scale questionnaire with 11 pairs of sound qualities was used. The results demonstrated that all of the respondents had negative impression of the water pump sound because of its noisy and harsh sound qualities. Live percussive music was considered with noisy and agitating by 97% of the respondents. Birds chirping and silent dormitory room were recognized by 91% of the respondents as the most comfortable sounds with natural and quiet impression. Acoustic comfort did not merely depend on having a low background noise level but also on the overall aural contextual satisfaction. These findings suggest that enhancing natural sounds and silence as well as mitigating man-made noises are the keys to achieving optimal acoustic comfort in a living environment.