Community Reactions To Air Force Noise: Part I. Basic Concepts And Preliminary Methodology

Abstract:
A comprehensive conceptual scheme to describe the annoyance and complaint processes involved in community reactions to Jet aircraft noise and related operations has been developed. This broad theoretical framework is based on a more detailed evaluation of a NACA* study, a series of intensive personal interviews with New York City and Hanscom Air Force Base residents, and discussions with technical personnel concerned with acoustics, public relations, Jet manufacturing, and flight operations. The theoretical scheme deals with broad aspects of the problem: the objective physical characteristics of Jet stimuli and related residential disturbances, the intervening sociopsychological variables affecting individual perception, feelings of annoyance, the additional interacting factors modifying individual expression of such feelings, and the overall community considerations determining the scope of community action. A standard personal interview questionnaire has also been developed and pretested for possible use in validating the conceptual scheme and in deriving precise statistical relationships among the many variables.