A field study on the subjective evaluation of soundscape

Overview & Synopsis

Researches on soundscape are focused on the interactions among the sound source/s, the environment and the receiver/s. While the effects of sound sources and sound environment are relatively easily described by objective means, the subjective nature of human perception, which depends on sociological, psychological and cultural factors, creates the main challenge. This paper is a study on the subjective evaluation of soundscape aiming to create a basis to be used in further soundscape researches. A survey form consisting of two parts; a questionnaire and a semantic differential test, is prepared. The questionnaire part covers categories such as; personal information, usage of field, concordance with the expectations and sound environment evaluation, aiming to investigate the pleasantness of soundscape. Semantic differential test is utilized to examine the quality of sound environment. The pairs of adjectives, which are used in the semantic differential test, are selected accordingly to both the vernacular language of the related community and the soundscape literature. Data held from the field study, which is realized in four areas, is statistically analyzed and the soundscapes of the areas are subjectively evaluated. The information obtained from this study will be used to progress in the next stage which is laboratory studies.