Let the Children Listen: A First Approximation to the Sound Environment Assessment of Children through a Soundwalk Approach

Abstract

The urban sound environment is one of the layers that characterizes a city, and several methodologies are used for its assessment, including the soundwalk approach. However, this approach has been tested mainly with adults. In the work presented here, the aim is to investigate a soundwalk methodology for children, analyzing the sound environment of five different sites of Gothenburg, Sweden, from children’s view-point, giving them the opportunity to take action as an active part of society. Both individual assessment of the sound environment and acoustic data were collected. The findings suggested that among significant results, children tended to rank the sound environment as slightly better when lower levels of background noise were present ( L A 90 ). Moreover, traffic dominance ratings appeared as the best predictor among the studied sound sources: when traffic dominated as a sound source, the children rated the sound environment as less good. Additionally, traffic volume appeared as a plausible predictor for sound environment quality judgments, since the higher the traffic volume, the lower the quality of the sound environment. The incorporation of children into urban sound environment research may be able to generate new results in terms of children’s understanding of their sound environment. Moreover, sound environment policies can be developed from and for children.

Is the sound environment relevant for how people use common spaces?

“…The questionnaire is based on previous ones used to study the sound environment in the city of Gothenburg. 37 Moreover, a set of additional questions was added based on the research performed by Kang et al 38–40 The questionnaires were available in both Swedish and English. The first page explained the instructions as well as the confidentiality treatment of the data in this voluntary study.…”

“…The second set of questions dealt with the suitable activities for the specific location, responding to the previous study carried out in the city of Gothenburg, 37 together with the list of sociotopes developed by the city 29 and the research done by Lavia et al 21 The list and their abbreviations, used from now on in this study, are shown in Table 3 with a scale of 1–5 (‘not applicable, slightly, moderately, very and perfectly’).…”

Exploring the role of soundscape in restorative experience: A pilot study from children’s perspective

“…However, existing studies involving acoustic environments for children have mainly focused on the detrimental effects of annoying noise, especially traffic noise and noise generated by the children themselves, which are the most prevalent background sounds in their daily environments ( Lercher et al, 2013 ; Estévez-Mauriz et al, 2020 ). To date, only a few have indicated the possible benefits of some noise on children’s performance ( Söderlund et al, 2007 ), and even fewer have looked at the positive role of overall soundscapes in children’s experiences.…”