Improving the hospital 'soundscape': a framework to measure individual perceptual response to hospital sounds

Work on the perception of urban soundscapes has generated a number of perceptual models which are proposed as tools to test and evaluate soundscape interventions. However, despite the excessive sound levels and noise within hospital environments, perceptual models have not been developed for these spaces. To address this, a two-stage approach was developed by the authors to create such a model. First, semantics were obtained from listening evaluations which captured the feelings of individuals from hearing hospital sounds. Then, 30 participants rated a range of sound clips representative of a ward soundscape based on these semantics. Principal component analysis extracted a two-dimensional space representing an emotional-cognitive response. The framework enables soundscape interventions to be tested which may improve the perception of these hospital environments. Practitioner Summary: Hospital sound is commonly measured in terms of objective sound level. This does not consider the positive or negative subjective reactions to these sounds. This paper understands these reactions and produces a perceptual framework which can be used to measure the subjective response to a hospital soundscape.