Responses to an increase in road traffic noise

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Abstract

Results are presented of a small longitudinal study of community response to road traffic noise following an increase in traffic along a residential street. A total of 20 respondents were surveyed and they showed no evidence of adaptation to the increased noise over the period between 7 and 19 months after the increase in traffic. Respondents' assessments of annoyance with the before-change conditions, made retrospectively after the change, were quite different from the assessments of annoyance that they made before the change occurred, though most of this difference was contributed by 8 of the 20 respondents. This small data set, when put together with other evidence on response to changed conditions, suggests that response bias is present in steady state assessments of annoyance and of a magnitude which would significantly affect the validity of self-reports of annoyance.

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Cited by (19)

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    2012, Science of the Total Environment
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    Study design and timing may affect observed changes in reported annoyance and other subjective responses, resulting in recall bias. Brown (1987) found that, following an increase in noise levels, retrospective assessment of subjective response differed from judgments made before the change. This difference in “before” and “retrospective before” responses was also shown when the noise levels were decreasing (Brown et al., 1985).

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