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Suggested Citation:"3 Literature Review." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2014. Research Methods for Understanding Aircraft Noise Annoyances and Sleep Disturbance. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/22352.
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Page 13
Page 14
Suggested Citation:"3 Literature Review." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2014. Research Methods for Understanding Aircraft Noise Annoyances and Sleep Disturbance. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/22352.
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Page 14

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3 Literature Review A literature review was conducted to support plans for a new national survey of aircraft noise in the United States. The review supports the planning by identifying methods for estimating a national dose- response relationship (the survey’s primary announced goal), evaluating issues about non-noise factors that are hypothesized to affect noise annoyance, and identifying unresolved noise annoyance issues that could be secondary goals for the national survey. The measure of impact for this survey, as for all dose- response noise regulations, is the privately-expressed noise annoyance that is measured in social surveys, not the visible, publicly-expressed actions such as complaints to authorities, lawsuits or public protests. 3.1 Primary Goal The announced primary goal is to form an accurate nation-wide estimate of the dose-response relationship: the function that predicts the proportion of the population annoyed (to varying degrees) by aircraft noise from acoustical data that characterizes the aircraft noise at their residences.6 The literature review supports a decision to use two noise annoyance questions from an ISO technical specification that are now widely used in noise annoyance surveys around the world. The review found that when multiple cities have been surveyed in a single study, the residents in different geographic areas (neighborhoods, cities, airports, etc.) have significantly different annoyance reactions to the same noise level. Despite many hypotheses, the causes of these differences have not been established. One of the implications of such geographical effects is that the national survey design should be based on a large number of randomly selected airports that are drawn with probability selection methods. The literature review identified one major uncertainty concerning plans for estimating the dose-response relationship: the mode of administering a questionnaire. Noise annoyance surveys have always varied as to whether they are interviewer-administered (face-to-face or telephone) or self-administered (usually mail-in), but more recently the economics of interviewing have resulted in some large surveys being self- administered. There is enough uncertainty about the effect of interviewing mode to mean that the results of a new US survey could not be compared with many other surveys unless effects of the survey mode are evaluated with new data from the US survey. The literature review identified 62 hypotheses about non-noise effects on annoyance and attempted to locate summaries that could be expected to provide evidence about each of the hypotheses. With over 600 noise surveys and over 1,000 publications it was not possible to conduct new summaries of evidence on each of the 62 issues. As a result the findings from previous published summaries were presented when available. Summaries are needed because individual studies often report contradictory findings and, as a result, conclusions can only be reached about average results when many studies are combined. These summaries were presented for 30 of the 62 issues for which a results-neutral search strategy produced the summary. For the remaining issues some study results are identified but the primary focus is on the implications for the new US survey. Some broad conclusions about the 30 summarized hypotheses were reached. In general, demographic characteristics of residents (gender, age, education, socio-economic status, etc.) have no important impact on noise annoyance. As a result demographic characteristics do not explain differences between annoyance reactions in different geographical areas. Selected attitudes, on the other hand, have a consistently strong effect: fear of danger from the noise source, perception that authorities could better control the noise, and self-reported general sensitivity to noise. A change in noise exposure affects reactions for road traffic and railway noise, but the effect on aircraft noise annoyance is uncertain. Ambient noise levels and time spent at home do not have an important effect on annoyance. 6 Throughout this section, italics are used to identify significant issues that shaped the survey implementation. 9

Conclusions on many other issues are not clear for a variety of reasons: results are contradictory, study methods are weak, too few studies have been conducted, or no surveys have been conducted. In general, characteristics of geographic areas have been only occasionally studied, often with weak methodologies and almost no non-survey information about the areas. No studies have been located that presented evidence on how annoyance is affected by airport authorities’ actions, activities, or community relations programs. Studies have not examined the correlation between public complaints and private annoyance. 3.2 Secondary Goals The secondary goals for a new national survey could be derived from the evidence from summary analyses in this literature review, knowledge about whether or not there are new methodological developments, estimates of costs, and a unique strength of the sample design - the large number of airports and neighborhoods to be studied. Of course all of these scientific and technical considerations must be weighed against policy judgments about the practical value of particular study goals. These various considerations suggest: a focus on the following factors that may help to explain the surveyed annoyance: characteristics of geographical areas, authorities’ actions, characteristics of community relations programs, relations to aircraft operations (landing/take-off/flight path location), and complaint rates. A focus on these types of goals should help to answer a major policy question: Is a single, national dose-response relationship justified because it is not possible to objectively predict deviations from a national average for local geographic areas? Or, alternatively, are there readily- available variables that predict differences between geographical areas and form a legitimate basis for local exceptions to national policies? Progress could also be made in identifying the size of the geographic units that are associated with unexplained variations in annoyance reactions. With a nested, clustered sample design it would be possible to begin to estimate the portion of the unexplained variance that is due to individuals’ situations (the variation between people in adjacent homes with identical exterior noise exposures), the portion that might be due to local factors (variation between nearby neighborhoods), the portion attributable to common aircraft operations (variation between larger areas exposed to similar aircraft operations) and the portion attributable to airport or city characteristics (the remaining differences between airports). Additional variables will need to be estimated for the national study, even if they have been studied before or can only be imprecisely measured, in order to provide some evidence as to whether such variables’ effects have or have not substantially biased the study results. Examples of such variables include demographic characteristics, recent changes in aircraft noise levels, estimates of ambient noise levels, meteorological conditions, and sensitivity to noise generally. 10

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TRB’s Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Web-Only Document 17: Research Methods for Understanding Aircraft Noise Annoyances and Sleep Disturbance explores the development and validation of a research protocol for a large-scale study of aircraft noise exposure-annoyance response relationships across the U.S. The report also highlights alternative research methods for field studies to assess the relationship between aircraft noise and sleep disturbance for U.S. airports.

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