Relationships between rating scales, question stem wording, and community responses to railway noise

Two series of social surveys on community responses to railway noise were carried out in Japan to evaluate the relationships between two verbal scales and a numeric scale, and those among four base descriptors. In the first survey, two types of questionnaires were prepared in which a 0–10- point numeric scale was used in combination with either a four-point or a five-point verbal scale. The key questions concerned annoyance, activity disturbance and related effects caused by railway noise. Community responses were compared on the basis of the dose–response relationships. Regarding the percentages of respondents who answered, “highly annoyed,” it was found that there were no systematic differences between the two verbal scales. It was also found that the extent of noise annoyance rated on the four-point or five-point verbal scale corresponded with that rated on the 11-point numeric scale by percentages of scale steps. In the second survey, four types of questionnaires were prepared, each using one of the four base descriptors. Community responses to general noise annoyance among the four base descriptors were compared. No systematic differences were found among the four base descriptors.