Construction of standard noise annoyance scales in Japanese and English by bilingual people

In order to compare community responses to noise internationally，standard annoyance scales are required.We constructed comparable English and Japanese scales for noise annoyance based on the responses of bilingual(English And Japanese)people in a questionnaire survey.In contrast ICBEN Team 6 members have conducted an international joint study to construct standard annoyance scales with people who are fluent in only their own languages.A laboratory experiment was conducted that used four annoyance scales in each language，4-and5-point verbal scales from both our questionnaire survey to bilingual people and from the ICBEN joint study.“Annoyance”and“urusai”were used as the word to describe the adverse effect of noise in English and Japanese.For this experiment 51 Japanese and 45 English speaking people evaluated road traffic noises at the levels of 45，55，65 and 75dB Lei D2 Aeq齐埃D2 with the four scales in each language.The small sample sizes and resulting variability in the findings mean that the foling conclusions should be regarded as tentative：1.Under some conditions，the distribution of answers on 4-pt or 5-pt verbal scales enddeps upon differences in the scifles of the scifles.This pattern was found for Japanese subjects both not for English-speaking subjects.2。Japanese express more annoyance than English-language subjects with the same noise exposure using scales that were previously judged to be equivalent。It is not clear whether these differences indicate that the questions or scales are not comparable or that there are genuine differences in the noise sensitively of Japanese people and people from English-speaking countries.

In order to compare community responses to noise internationally, standard annoyance scales are required. We constructed comparable English and Japanese scales for noise annoyance based on the responses of bilingual (English and Japanese) people in a questionnaire survey. In contrast ICBEN Team 6 members have conducted an international joint study to construct standard annoyance scales with people who are fluent in only their own languages. A laboratory experiment was conducted that used four annoyance scales in each language, 4-and 5-point verbal scales from both our questionnaire survey to bilingual people and from the ICBEN joint study. "Annoyance" and "urusai" were used as the word to describe the adverse effect of noise in English and Japanese. For this experiment 51 Japanese and 45 English speaking people evaluated road traffic noises at the levels of 45, 55, 65 and 75 dB LィイD2AeqィエD2 with the four scales in each language.The small sample sizes and resulting variability in the findings mean that the following conclusions should be regarded as tentative:1.Under some conditions, the distribution of answers on 4-pt or 5-pt verbal scales depends upon differences in the intensity of the modifiers used on the scales. This pattern was found for Japanese subjects both not for English-speaking subjects.2. Japanese express more annoyance than English-language subjects with the same noise exposure using scales that were previously judged to be equivalent. It is not clear whether these differences indicate that the questions or scales are not comparable or that there are genuine differences in the noise sensitively of Japanese people and people from English-speaking countries.