Non-Participant Observation Methods for Soundscape Design and Urban Planning

Abstract

More accurate non-participatory parameters and psychoacoustics to assess human perceptual responses to the acoustic environment are critical to inform effective urban sound planning and applied soundscape practice. Non-participatory observation methods are widely used by experts to capture animal behavior. In 2012, Lavia and Witchel applied these principles and methodologies for the first time to capturing and assessing human behavior “in the wild” to changes to the acoustic environment using added sound and music interventions in a clubbing district. Subsequent work was conducted with Aletta and Kang and Healey, Howes, Steffens, and Fiebig to begin characterizing the acoustic environment and human responses to align the perceptual and physical findings. Here, the authors report on new work and analysis and propose a preliminary predictive agile applied soundscape framework using non-participatory observation methods and psychoacoustics to be used with environmental assessment practice and evolving urban soundscape planning methods by researchers, practitioners, and policy makers.

Associations between Positive Health-Related Effects and Soundscapes Perceptual Constructs: A Systematic Review

“…Indeed, the vast majority of soundscape studies nowadays tend to refer to data collection on individual responses about the acoustic environments experienced by people on site, with a relatively limited set of methods, such as: Soundwalks, questionnaires/interviews, non-participant behavioural observations, etc. [ 10 , 13 , 50 , 51 ]. These approaches encounter growing consensus in the soundscape research community, because of the ecological validity provided by their results, which is often compromised in laboratory settings [ 52 ], or unattended large-scale socio-acoustic surveys.…”

“…Studies dealing with physiological measures are of course less vulnerable to this type of bias. However, more approaches are becoming relevant in soundscape studies to try to overcome the “experimenter bias” and self-reported data, by relying on behavioural observations and covert methods for data collection [ 50 , 51 ].…”

Acoustics for Supportive and Healthy Buildings: Emerging Themes on Indoor Soundscape Research

“…Non-participatory methods can help overcome this bias as the impact of sounds is inferred by observing the behaviour of participants while they are not aware of the observations taking place [77].…”

The Soundscape Indices (SSID) Protocol: A Method for Urban Soundscape Surveys—Questionnaires with Acoustical and Contextual Information

“…Part 3 of the ISO 12913 series builds on Part 2 and provides guidelines for analyzing data gathered using only those methods [6]. However, the range of possible methodological approaches to soundscape data collection is much broader and it includes, for instance, laboratory experiments [2,7,8], pseudo-randomized experience sampling [9], and even non-participatory studies [10]. The protocol described in this paper was designed having in mind the need for a relatively large soundscape dataset that could be used for design and modeling purposes, thus trying to expand the scope of soundwalks that typically deal with much smaller samples of participants [11].…”