A social survey to examine the variance of aircraft noise annoyance

✍ Scribed by R.M. Edwards

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1975
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 632 KB
• Volume: 41
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-460X
• DOI: 10.1016/s0022-460x(75)80194-5

✦ Synopsis

The large variability in the measurement of human response to aircraft noise is described, and the philosophy behind a social survey designed to eliminate some causes of this variability, by considering a small geographical area over which the noise from one aircraft flyover is nearly constant, is outlined. Results from this survey show that it is not noise measurements and noise indices that need improvement, but measures of human response. Until we have a better measure ofresponse than McKennell's Guttman Annoyance Scale [1 ], efforts to improve noise indices are wasted. The variability in annoyance score of the residents of the area studied is just as high as that in previous surveys in which NNI has been used as an Index to group areas of equal noise exposure. Some objections to the operation of this particular Guttman scale are raised. Analysis of the Coefficients of Reproducibility of the scale as used in various surveys shows that the scale has behaved differently in different surveys.