Development of equivalent noise annoyance scales in Japanese and English for social survey

ICBEN（国际噪音生物效应委员会）第六小组（社区对噪音的反应）用九种语言制定了标准化的噪音烦恼量表和问题。英语等级为“非常”、“非常”、“一般”、“稍微”和“根本不”。日语是“hijoni”、“daibu”、“tasho”、“sorehodo”……奈”和“mattaku…奈”。为了保证量表的等效性，假设在任何语言中最大程度的烦恼是相同的，并且不同受试者引起的结果差异可以忽略不计。为了验证这两个假设，我们进行了一项实验，73名双语受试者直接评估日语和英语修饰语的强度。“Kiwamete”被选为最高修饰语，这与之前ICBEN研究中的“hijoni”有所不同，但两者之间的差异不大。“kiwamete”和“extremely”之间的强度差异显著但很小。这表明日语和英语最高修饰语的强度差别不大。直接验证日语和英语疑问词的等价性可能是不可能的。因此，研究人员进行了一项实验，让202名日本人和129名说英语的人通过三个不同印象的问题来评估道路交通噪音：“这么多的道路交通噪音会给你带来多大的困扰、打扰或烦恼？？”“这么大的道路交通噪音到底有多烦人、多烦人？”以及“这么大的道路交通噪音会给你带来多大的烦恼、烦恼或担忧？”结果发现，问题措辞对烦恼反应没有影响，日语和英语之间的趋势也没有差异。从以上两个实验中可以发现，ICBEN Team 6构建的日语和英语的噪音烦恼量表和问题是等效的。

ICBEN (International Commission on Biological Effects of Noise) Team 6 (Community Response to Noise) developed standardized noise annoyance scales and questions in nine languages. The English scale was "extremely," "very," "moderately," "slightly" and "not at all. " The Japanese was "hijoni," "daibu," "tasho," "sorehodo...nai" and "mattaku.. .nai." To grantee the equivalence of the scales it was hypothesized that the maximum degree of annoyance was the same in any language and that the difference in results caused by different subjects was negligible. In order to validate the two hypotheses, an experiment was conducted in which 73 bilingual subjects evaluated the intensities of Japanese and English modifiers directly. "Kiwamete" was selected as the highest modifier, which was different from "hijoni" in the previous ICBEN study but the difference between the two modifiers as little. The difference in intensity between "kiwamete" and "extremely" was significant but small. This shows that there was little difference in intensity between Japanese and English highest modifiers.It may be impossible to validate the equivalence of Japanese and English question wordings directly. So an experiment was conducted, in which 202 Japanese and 129 English-speaking people evaluated road traffic noises by using three questions with different impressions: "How much would this much noise from the road traffic bother, disturb or annoy you??" "How bothersome, disturbing or annoying should this much noise from road traffic be rated as?" and "How much would this much noise from the road traffic worry, irritate or concern you ?" As a result, it was found that there was no effect of question wording on annoyance response and that there was no difference in trend between Japanese and English.From the above two experiment, it was found that the noise annoyance scales and questions in Japanese and English constructed by ICBEN Team 6 were equivalent.