Citation

Zimmer K, Ellermeier W. J. Environ. Psychol. 1999; 19(3): 295-302.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1999, Academic Press)

DOI

10.1006/jevp.1999.0133

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

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.