PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF FOUR MEASURES OF NOISE SENSITIVITY: A COMPARISON

Individual noise sensitivity is a stable personality trait covering attitudes towards a wide range of environmental sounds. It is a major antecendent of noise annoyance reactions, and is assessed by obtaining responses to one or several rating-scale items. The psychometric properties of four German-...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of environmental psychology 1999-09, Vol.19 (3), p.295-302
Main Authors: ZIMMER, KARIN, ELLERMEIER, WOLFGANG
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applied psychology
Biological and medical sciences
Environment. Ecology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Measures
Noise
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychometric properties
Sensitivity
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Summary:Individual noise sensitivity is a stable personality trait covering attitudes towards a wide range of environmental sounds. It is a major antecendent of noise annoyance reactions, and is assessed by obtaining responses to one or several rating-scale items. The psychometric properties of four German-language noise-sensitivity measures—a translation of Weinstein's (1978) noise-sensitivity scale, a newly developed questionnaire, and two single-item questions reflecting susceptibility to sounds and noise, respectively—were evaluated, using a student sample ofn =213 persons. Reliability coefficients ranged from r=0·70 for the rating of susceptibility to sounds to r=0·92 for the newly constructed questionnaire. Construct validity was appraised by inter-correlating noise-sensitivity scores, and by relating noise-sensitivity scores to questionnaire measures of depression, stress, anger, and anxiety. The results indicate that, while the questionnaire measures satisfy established criteria for test evaluation, the one-item ratings do not. Further exploratory analyses on a subset of the sample found only weak relationships between self-report measures of noise sensitivity and objective performance decrements under noise.
ISSN:0272-4944
1522-9610
DOI:10.1006/jevp.1999.0133