Noise Annoyance Reactions of Children in Primary Schools

Abstract

This survey reports annoyance reaction of primary school children to road traffic and students’ talk in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A questionnaire was used to collect data from randomly selected 2,265 children from 56 primary schools in the city. The analysis of the data showed that the children were more significantly annoyed by students’ talk than by road traffic. The analysis also revealed a significant gender difference in noise annoyance, with boys more annoyed than girls irrespective of a type of learning activity and a source of noise. Moreover, a significant difference was also observed among learning activities in road traffic annoyance, with the children more annoyed in listening than in group work and reading, and in group work than in reading. Taken together, the results of the study indicated that noise annoyance in children is significantly related to noise source, gender and type of learning activity children do at school.