EXAMINATION OF SOME IMPLICIT ASSUMPTIONS OF NOISE-IMPACT ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES.

The authors use data collected in southern Ontario to examine three assumptions, expressed as testable hypotheses, that deal with the relationship between the subjective rating of specific noise sources and the rating of the overall level of neighborhood noise, the strength of this relationship as a function of the number of disturbing noises present, and the relationship between specific noise-source ratings and the total number of disturbing noises. In testing each assumption, a major hypothesis and alternative hypotheses are proposed and supporting explanations are suggested.