Analysis of How the Noise Level Depends on Different Activities in a Child Day-Care Center

• In child day-care centers the noise level can rise to high levels and in some cases become so high that the people present risk hearing damage. The purpose of this investigation was to study how the noise level depends on the different activities during the day. The study was performed at a child day-care center and 6 children and 5 adult female teachers participated. The participants had a microphone attached next to the ear connected to a wearable digital recorder. A total of 32.5 hours of data was recorded. By listening tests the recorded data could be sorted by activity and by number of people present in the same room as the test subject. Activities were classified as belonging to one of the following: outdoor activity, indoor play, singing, storytelling and gathering. Further, by listening, the data was classified in small group/large group (3 or less/more than 3). The results show that the average noise level (LAeq) for outdoor activity was the highest and was measured to 88.1 dBA (average over 7h52min). Singing was 81.5 dBA (1h26min), indoor play 81.3 dBA (19h21min), storytelling 76.6 dBA (1h09min) and gathering 75.0 dBA (2h44min). The noise level difference between all activities except between singing and indoor play and gathering and storytelling could be verified using t-test (p<0.001). Further, the results showed that the average noise level was 86.6 dBA (14h11min) for the large group and 79.6 dBA (18h21min) for the small group. This difference, of 7.0 dB was statistically validated (p<0.001) using t-test.

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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