A questionnaire investigating the emotional salience of sounds

Assessing the emotional impact that sounds have on individuals is of fundamental importance. In fact, individuals might choose a particular environment, such as a square or a green urban park, by also considering how positively or negatively the acoustic characteristics of that environment make them feel. However, at the moment, no questionnaire allows to reliably and clearly assess the emotional salience of sounds; that is how positively and negatively a sound is perceived by individuals. Therefore, in the present work, we developed and compared two different questionnaires (A and B) focused on how the sound is affectively assessed (e.g. pleasant, calm) and how it makes people feel (e.g. happy, sad, energetic). The two questionnaires differ mainly in their first part, where Questionnaire A was built starting from the circumplex model of soundscape perception, whereas Questionnaire B was created by focusing on the emotional dimension of sounds. The questionnaires were administered to two different groups of participants. Principal component analysis and reliability analysis showed that Questionnaire B was able to capture more reliably and clearly the Positive and Negative dimensions of the sound than questionnaire A. The implications of these results are discussed in light of recent indications about the need to assess in a clear, reliable and straightforward way the impact of the sound environment on humans.