How to better design a research project to assess effects of transportation noise on humans

Abstract

The United States Air Force recently funded a research project to review the recent literature on noise and begin an update of the International Bibliography on Noise (IBON). Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) reviewed the literature on a variety of topics including human annoyance, non-auditory health effects, sleep disturbance, speech interference, child learning, animal effects, structural effects, and underwater effects. Each SME reviewed abstracts of thousands of papers and read hundreds of papers. As a result, the SMEs were able to see a vast range of methods for assessing effects of noise. In some of the topic areas, SMEs found that the number of really well-done research studies was actually quite small. While some papers did a good job of measuring or modeling noise, most of them did a poor job of assessing noise effects. While some papers did a good job of measuring or estimating noise effects, most of those did a poor job of measuring or modeling noise. In this presentation, one of the SMEs will present his thoughts on how to design a research project to do both a good job assessing transportation generated noise AND the effects of that transportation noise on humans.