The Effect of Own Voice on Noise Dosimeter Measurements : A Field Study in a Day-Care Environment, Including Adults and Children

• Noise dosimeters are valuable tools in assessing the individual noise dose in the workplace. At non-industrial work places with a high degree of communication, such measurements would include the wearer’s own voice which would be registered as noise. This may not always be desirable. The purpose of this investigation was to study the effect of the wearers own voice in noise dosimeter measurements, and especially the difference between children and adults as test subjects. The study took place at a day-care center and sixteen children and thirteen adult female preschool teachers participated. The participants wore a digital recorder during the day, which recorded the sound signal and vibrations originating from an accelerometer attached to the neck of the test subjects, for distinguishing of whether the subject was speaking or not. Thus, average A-weighted noise levels with and without the influence of the subjects own voice could be obtained. The Leq for the measurements with and without the own voice was 84.6 dBA and 72.2 dBA for the children, respectively, and 79.3 dBA and 70.0 dBA for adults. Student’s t-test showed a significant (p<0.01) difference of 12.4 dBA for children and 9.3 dBA for adults when comparing measurements including and excluding the own voice and also that the difference was significantly larger for children. Thus, the study conclude that the influence from the own voice implied an augmentation of the Leq value and that there is a significant difference between children and adults in how large this augmentation is.

Ämnesord

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik -- Signalbehandling (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering -- Signal Processing (hsv//eng)

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