Annoyance Scale Research Articles

Note on the development of a Brazilian version of a noise annoyance scale

In order to compare community responses to environmental noise across cultures and languages, international standardized annoyance scales are necessary. ICBEN Team 6 has organized the development of scales for eight European languages and for Japanese. More recently, scales for three other Asian languages were added. The present study reports on the use of the ICBEN method to construct an annoyance scale for Brazilian Portuguese.

The influence of binaural effects on annoyance for transportation noise

A laboratory study was conducted to identify the significance of the binaural effect on annoyance by transportation noise. There were 377 participants (240 male and 137 female). Every participant marked the annoyance score (from 0 to 10) for each stimulus on their questionnaire. All of data were divided into four groups according to four types of transportation noise sources. The difference in the mean annoyance scores between subgroups according to sound recording/ playback techniques was statistically significant in the four noise groups. Stepwise multiple regression analysis was conducted. Using a regression model, predictions of L Aeq , Technique and their interaction term (L Aeq *Technique) involving dummy variable were made. In spite of some limitations of the process of the laboratory test, meaningful results were acquired. This study showed that the binaural effect was one of the acoustical factors modifying annoyance, and quantitative expression of binaural effect is suggested. Annoyance was explained by L Aeq and an interaction term in the resultant model functions for the four noise sources. Regression coefficients of the interaction term for each model equation were almost the same, which explained the extent of the binaural effect. The binaural effect was defined as the difference of annoyance variations between two sub-groups when L Aeq varies by ΔL Aeq from the specified noise level. The binaural effect was expressed as 0.01ΔL Aeq on the basis of a 0 to 10 annoyance scale.

The development of a noise annoyance scale for rating residential noises

In this study, 5-point and 7-point verbal noise annoyance scales were developed. The 5-point annoyance scale for outside environmental noise was developed from a survey conducted in four Korean cities. An auditory experiment using residential noises such as airborne, bathroom drainage, and traffic noises was conducted to compare the effectiveness of the 5-point and 7-point scales for rating residential indoor noise. Result showed that the 7-point scale yielded more detailed responses to indoor residential noise. In addition, auditory experiments were conducted to develop a noise annoyance scale for the classification of common residential noises. The modifiers used in the scales were selected according to the method proposed by ICBEN (International Commission on the Biological 12Effect of Noise) Team 6. As a result, the difference between the intensity of 21 modifiers investigated in the survey and the auditory experiment was very small. It was also found that the intensity of the selected modifiers in the 7-point noise annoyance scale was highly correlated with noise levels, and that the intensity difference between each pair of successive levels in the 7-point annoyance scale was almost identical.

청감실험을 통한 생활소음의 평가척도 및 기준 설정

A 7-point verbal noise annoyance scale for residential noises was developed in this study. An auditory experiment using major residential noises such as air-borne, bathroom drainage, and traffic noises was conducted to develop a noise annoyance scale for rating residential noises and allowable limit of them. The modifiers used in the scales were selected according to the method proposed by ICBEN(international commission on the biological effect of noise) Team 6. Results showed that the intensity of the selected words in the 7-point noise annoyance scale was highly correlated with noise levels. and that the intensity difference between each pair of successive levels in the 7-point annoyance scale was almost identical. The allowable limit of residential noise was also investigated in the auditory experiment and that of airborne, drainage and traffic noises were 42.3 dB(A), 41.0 dB(A) and 42.7 dB(A), respectively.

Choice of Japanese modifiers in noise annoyance scale during exposures to white noise

The linearity of a Japanese verbal scale of annoyance was estimated under real noise exposure. Young healthy adults, 32 male and 132 female were exposed to white noise of 30, 45, 60, 75 and 90 dBA in rooms where the exposure levels could be controlled according to contours. The series of noise exposure consisted of three components; white noise, pure-tone for conditioning and silence for evaluating noise. During the exposures the noisiness of each emission was evaluated with the verbal scale and a line-rating scale. The data showed a significant correlation of about 0.9 between the exposure level and the line length on the rating scale. The regression line of the noise level to the line length exhibited a reasonable locus of zero on the line length at the ambient noise level. The rank correlation between the selected modifier and the noise level was nearly 0.8 ( p < 0.001 ) . When the five modifiers were converted to 1–5 points, respectively, the regression of the line length to the selected modifier revealed an adequate and consistent fitness (coefficient of determination was > 0.8 ). The results suggest that the scale can be used as an equally divided linear scale in community noise research.

Evaluating the equivalence of verbal scales and question stems to be used in English and Japanese noise annoyance questions

Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the equivalence of noise annoyance scales and questions recommended by Team 6 (Community Response to Noise) of ICBEN for English and Japanese, two strikingly different languages. The first experiment was conducted with bilingual subjects in order to test a key assumption of the method established by ICBEN Team 6 for the development of equivalent noise annoyance scales: subjects who speak different languages interpret the concept of “highest degree” of annoyance similarly. The results indicate that English- and Japanese-speaking subjects do interpret the “highest degree” similarly. The second experiment tested for effects of wording differences. English- and Japanese-speaking subjects were presented with noise annoyance questions of one of three format types. The first type was similar to the question format recommended by ICBEN Team 6. It focused on the degree to which a given noise would “bother, disturb, or annoy” the subject. The second asked subjects to evaluate the “bothersome, annoying, or disturbing” quality of the noise. The third asked how much the noise would “worry, irritate, or concern” the subject. No significant difference was found in responses to the three formats when subjects evaluated noise in laboratory conditions.

Standardized noise annoyance scales in Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese

Internationally standardized annoyance scales are required in order to compare community responses to environmental noises measured in various linguistic regions. ICBEN Team 6 organized an international joint study to establish standardized noise annoyance scales and has developed scales and questions in nine linguistic regions. With the exception of Japan, all of these regions were Euro-American. Thus, it has been necessary to augment the original ICBEN study by utilizing the ICBEN method to construct noise annoyance scales for use in other Asian countries, because noise pollution is becoming an increasingly important environmental issue in these countries. Also, Asian data should be compared internationally with Euro-American data. The present study reports on the use of the ICBEN method to construct annoyance scales in Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese.

Equivalence of noise annoyance scales in Japanese and English: An experiment using bilingual subjects

A method established by ICBEN (International Commission on the Biological Effects of Noise) Team 6 (Community Response to Noise) has been used to develop equivalent noise annoyance scales in nine languages. A key assumption of this method is that subjects who speak different languages interpret the concept of “highest degree” of annoyance similarly. In this study, an experiment was conducted using 73 bilingual subjects to test this assumption and thereby assess the equivalence of the Japanese and English ICBEN scales. All of the bilingual subjects followed a slightly modified version of the ICBEN method to produce scales in both Japanese and English. The results indicate that English- and Japanese-speaking subjects do not differ significantly in their interpretations of the “highest degree” of annoyance. Thus, a key premise of the ICBEN method for producing equivalent scales in different languages was confirmed for English and Japanese. In addition, although the Japanese modifier “hijoni” has frequently been translated as “very,” the results of this study show that “extremely” is a more appropriate translation. Finally, evidence was found that bilingual subjects may differ significantly from monolingual subjects in their interpretations of certain words.

Analysis of Spanish adjectives to develop a Likert scale useful for studies of urban noise annoyance

The present work describes the development and analysis of a Spanish annoyance scale for use in community noise assessments. The use of different descriptors and intervals for different authors prevents comparing studies of assessment of noise reactions. It is not clear how many semantic distinctions can be made to describe subjective reactions to noise. There is also great variability in language use reflecting educational, social class, regional, and subcultural differences. Finally, scaling annoyance responses, when the considered intervals are not equally distributed, may seriously distort results when analyzed with parametric statistics. Using three different questions, almost 400 subjects were asked to rate 25 different Spanish descriptors of annoyance. Our attempt to produce a Spanish standardized annoyance scale with descriptors marking clear semantic distinctions, roughly equidistant from each other, and having wide acceptability is presented here. Taking into account that Spanish is the official language in 21 countries and it is spoken by more than 300 million people, one of our goals in this meeting is to discuss our method and try to generalize it in order to obtain a real, universal Spanish annoyance scale.

Vibration in dwellings from road and rail traffic — Part III: towards a common methodology for socio-vibrational surveys

While a range of international standards defining noise, vibration and other physical environmental measures have been established, common methodologies for measuring people's reactions to these same environmental effects are still in their infancy. This reduces the comparability of prevalence statistics and exposure–effect relationships developed by different researchers. The public authorities are served incompatible or seemingly conflicting information from different surveys when deciding on appropriate guidelines and limits. Drawing on experiences with the 1998 Norwegian Socio-vibrational Survey and a Swedish socio-acoustic survey supplemented with vibration measures, a new Nordtest Method: NT ACOU 106 Acoustics—Assessment of annoyance by vibrations in dwellings from road and rail traffic has been defined. The method describes sampling requirements, and proposes a mandatory verbal 5-point categorical annoyance scale and an optional 11-point numerical annoyance scale, both with lower anchoring point “Do not notice”. A survey data output format is specified to allow researchers to pool data from different surveys.

International joint study on the meas urement of community response to noise : Construction of noise annoyance scale in Japanese

International joint study on the meas urement of community response to noise : Construction of noise annoyance scale in Japanese

心理評価に用いる程度副詞の感性工学的検討

The environmental standards for noise annoyance are set on the basis of exposure-response relation between noise level and degree of response for various noises. The authors have continued the joint study to achieve the followings with ICBEN (International Commission on Biological Effect of Noise) Team 6 (Community Response to Noise) since 1993. The aim of this study is to facilitate the comparison of the result. So, we set guideline to the mentioned items in our report in order to construct the international standardized noise annoyance scale and make a comparative study of them. In this paper, the data of survey that authors collected up to now showed the possibility of realization to clear the relationship between adverbs and to have a quantitative understanding of the relation. As the conclusion, we found the image of adverbs that was transformed to be mapping in 1 - dimensional space by MDS is the most simple and effective inspection method to study about the factor of the kansei and resembling nature to modifiers.

General scales of community reaction to noise (dissatisfaction and perceived affectedness) are more reliable than scales of annoyance.

General measures of reaction to noise, which assess the respondent's perceived affectedness or dissatisfaction, appear to be more valid and internally consistent than more narrow measures, such as specific assessment of noise annoyance. However, the test-retest reliability of general and specific measures has yet to be compared. As a part of the large-scale Sydney Airport Health Study, 97 respondents participated in the same interview twice, several weeks apart. Test-retest reliabilities were found to be significant (p < 0.001) for two general questions and three specific "annoyance" questions. The general measures were significantly more valid for four of the six correlations (with activity disturbance), and more stable than the annoyance scales for five of the six possible test-retest comparisons. Amongst 1,015 respondents at Time 1, the questions regarding general reaction were more internally consistent than the questions regarding annoyance. Taken together, these data indicate that general measures of reaction to noise have superior psychometric properties (validity, internal consistency, and stability) compared with measures of specific reactions such as annoyance.

STANDARDIZED GENERAL-PURPOSE NOISE REACTION QUESTIONS FOR COMMUNITY NOISE SURVEYS: RESEARCH AND A RECOMMENDATION

Differences in survey questions' wordings and weakness in some questions used to measure noise annoyance have interfered with accumulating knowledge about the factors that affect different communities' responses to noise. In 1993 an ICBEN team, Community Response to Noise, set the goal of creating high-quality survey questions that would yield internationally comparable measures of overall reactions to noise sources. After 7 years of discussions and research the team has developed and tested a method that attempts to meet those goals. The team recommends the use of a pair of multi-purpose questions in community noise surveys. The wording of the questions is presented for the nine languages for which a standardized empirical study protocol has been followed to select annoyance scale words. The team's protocol can be used to create comparable questions for additional languages in the future.

Determination of sound quality of HVAC systems on trains using multivariate analysis

An attempt was made to develop a model describing annoyance of noises generated by HVAC (Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning) systems on trains. The work was performed in three sequential parts. The first part contained the recording and reproduction of the HVAC noises. A binaural recording technique was applied and headphones were used for the reproduction. The second part of the study included both subjective and objective evaluations of the recorded noises. In the subjective evaluation 33 subjects judged nine different noise stimuli on annoyance scales. In the objective evaluation several sound quality descriptors and the third-octave-band levels were calculated. In the final part of the study, multivariate analysis was applied to modeling annoyance of the HVAC noises on the basis of the sound quality descriptors and third-octave-band levels. An annoyance prediction model was developed based on sharpness, a sound quality descriptor that describes the high frequency content in the sound, and a newly developed descriptor, tonal ratio. The new descriptor identifies the tonal components by comparing the sound pressure level between 125 and 800 Hz with the two third-octave-band levels adjacent to it. The interpretation of the results is that high frequency content and tonal components are the main contributors to the annoyance of HVAC noises and is where the main focus should be addressed in order to improve the sound quality of future HVAC systems.

The Psychological Cost of Aircraft Noise for Children*

Psychological effects of aircraft noise exposure on children have only recently been addressed in the References. The current study took advantage of a natural experiment caused by the opening of a major new airport, exposing children in a formerly quiet area to aircraft noise. In this prospective longitudinal investigation, which employed non-exposed control groups, effects of aircraft noise prior to and subsequent to inauguration of the new airport as well as effects of chronic noise and its reduction at the old airport (6 and 18 month post relocation), were studied in 326 children aged 9 to 13 years. The psychological health of children was investigated with a standardized quality of life scale as well as with a motivational measure derived from the Glass and Singer stress aftereffects paradigm. In addition a self report noise annoyance scale was used. In the children studied at the two airports over three time points, results showed a significant decrease of total quality of life 18 month after aircraft noise exposure as well as a motivational deficits operationalized by fewer attempts to solve insoluble puzzles in the new airport area. Parallel shifts in children's attributions for failure were also noted. At the old airport parallel impairments were present before the airport relocation but subsided there after. These findings are in accord with reports of impaired psychological health after noise exposure and indicate the relevance of monitoring psychological parameters as a function of environmental Stressors among children.

Limits of utility of dosage-response analysis for predicting the Prevalence of annoyance

Dose-response analyses from field studies are essential parts of the information necessary for establishing limits for tolerable noise immissions within the sites (e.g., residential areas with certain immissions) and persons actually studied. But they have their limits when (1) dose-response data are compared between independent studies, (2) annoyance data are extrapolated to other sites, other immission types, levels resp. numbers of noise events, other people, or future times, and (3) the effect of noise abatement programs is predicted. These limitations are presented, using empirical data for illustration purposes. The discussion concentrates (a) on methodological aspects of measuring annoyance, (b) methodological aspects of converting continuous annoyance scales to the percentage of highly annoyed people, and (c) on the contribution of nonacoustic factors to annoyance and to empirical dose-response relationships. It is concluded that dose-response analyses must not be discarded, but their limited utility should be kept in mind.

Uncertainty in dosage-annoyance relations

Dosage-annoyance relations have traditionally been derived by fitting analytical curves through data gathered from large numbers of field studies. Information on the uncertainty of the relation thus derived is not often given. In this paper the same data set will be examined in several different ways and how this can influence conclusions will be demonstrated. The data set used is taken from Fidell and Barber [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 89, 221–233 (1991)]. Transformations of annoyance scales and sound-level measures are assumed to be suitable and are not redone in this work. It is assumed that the average annoyance response of Man is searched and that the dosage-response curves will be used to integrate exposure levels to a single figure that can be used to compare noise impact to a community. This goal is totally different, with respect to uncertainty, from predicting noise annoyance in a particular exposure situation. In this work, individual data are combined, taking into account the different number of data points at different exposure levels and the uncertainty in results from individual studies. Each study is treated as an observation made by an independent expert. Differences to dosage-annoyance relations derived in a more traditional way are discussed. The obvious conclusion is that dosage response relations must be used with caution and that this can well be expressed by taking into account calculation uncertainty accurately.

The psychological cost of aircraft noise for children

Psychological effects of aircraft noise exposure on children have only recently been addressed in the References. The current study took advantage of a natural experiment caused by the opening of a major new airport, exposing children in a formerly quiet area to aircraft noise. In this prospective longitudinal investigation, which employed non-exposed control groups, effects of aircraft noise prior to and subsequent to inauguration of the new airport as well as effects of chronic noise and its reduction at the old airport (6 and 18 month post relocation), were studied in 326 children aged 9 to 13 years. The psychological health of children was investigated with a standardized quality of life scale as well as with a motivational measure derived from the Glass and Singer stress aftereffects paradigm. In addition a self report noise annoyance scale was used. In the children studied at the two airports over three time points, results showed a significant decrease of total quality of life 18 month after aircraft noise exposure as well as a motivational deficits operationalized by fewer attempts to solve insoluble puzzles in the new airport area. Parallel shifts in children's attributions for failure were also noted. At the old airport parallel impairments were present before the airport relocation but subsided there after. These findings are in accord with reports of impaired psychological health after noise exposure and indicate the relevance of monitoring psychological parameters as a function of environmental stressors among children.

An experimental study on an annoyance scale for noise assessment

An experimental study on an annoyance scale for noise assessment