Development of a social survey for the study of vibration annoyance in residential environments : good practice guidance

This paper outlines good practice guidelines for developing a social survey to investigate public annoyance in relation to environmental vibration. Drawing on the development of international good practice guidelines and research into noise and vibration annoyance, a number of challenges that arise in developing such a survey are addressed. The issues include the development of rating scales for annoyance and social factors, decisions regarding the terminology used in the survey to define annoyance, different sources of vibration, and how respondents’ consider the residential area of investigation when completing the survey. The process highlights the need to combine disciplines, in this case applying knowledge from social sciences and acoustics in order to ensure the collection of robust and reliable data. The final survey developed from this process was used in a national survey in the United Kingdom which aimed to produce exposure–response relationships for vibration and annoyance in relation to railway activity, construction activity, and internal vibration sources.