Standardized noise annoyance scales in Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese

Internationally standardized annoyance scales are required in order to compare community responses to environmental noises measured in various linguistic regions. ICBEN Team 6 organized an international joint study to establish standardized noise annoyance scales and has developed scales and questions in nine linguistic regions. With the exception of Japan, all of these regions were Euro-American. Thus, it has been necessary to augment the original ICBEN study by utilizing the ICBEN method to construct noise annoyance scales for use in other Asian countries, because noise pollution is becoming an increasingly important environmental issue in these countries. Also, Asian data should be compared internationally with Euro-American data. The present study reports on the use of the ICBEN method to construct annoyance scales in Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese.