An investigation of acoustical environments in the elderly care facilities

Abstract

62 rooms including living rooms, common rooms and dining rooms in 11 elderly care facilities had been measured, and some objective acoustical parameters in these rooms were measured such as background noise level (BNL) and reverberation time (RT). The range of BNL in 62 rooms was from 26.8 dBA to 67.2 dBA, and the mean BNL was 41.3 dBA and the standard deviation (SD) was 10.1 dBA. In these rooms, the averaged BNL in the living rooms was lower than those in the common rooms and the dining rooms, while the dining rooms had the highest averaged BNL. The RT in 500–4000 Hz octave bands, early-to-late sound ratio (C50) in 500–4000 Hz octave bands and speech transmission index (STI) in these rooms were 0.36–1.86 s, −4.48 to 9.67 dB and 0.47–0.81, respectively. Their mean values were 0.94 s, 1.73 dB and 0.64, and the SD were 0.40 s, 3.09 dB and 0.09, respectively. For all these measured rooms, the living room had a relatively short RT with a good speech intelligibility, while the dining room had a long RT with a fair speech intelligibility. To provide the elderly people with a good speech communication environment, some sound absorption and insulation treatment measures should be taken for the long RT and high BNL in the rooms of the elderly care facilities to reduce the BNL and RT and improve the speech intelligibility in these rooms.