Student’s Self-Reported Experience of Soundscape: The Link between Noise, Psychological and Physical Well-Being

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

The research topic is very meaningful since few studies have been carried out on the influence of inner noise in schools. How school children react to the noise in classrooms is worthy of being studied because it helps us to optimize the environment and provide supportive acoustic conditions for children's health and well-being. The investigation in this study was well organized and very interesting results were obtained. However, some tiny problems should be revised before considering accepting the manuscript.

1) There are many signs and marks in different colors in this manuscript and please make sure whether this manuscript is the final version or not.

2) Improvement is needed on the figure to show the authors' purpose clearly. For example, what is the difference between heat maps between the two human shapes in each picture? I think more explanation is needed. Also, the numbers and characters in Figure 4 are too tiny to be seen clearly and easily. 

Author Response

Reviewer 1 : The research topic is very meaningful since few studies have been carried out on the influence of inner noise in schools. How school children react to the noise in classrooms is worthy of being studied because it helps us to optimize the environment and provide supportive acoustic conditions for children's health and well-being. The investigation in this study was well organized and very interesting results were obtained. However, some tiny problems should be revised before considering accepting the manuscript.

Thank you for your thorough revision. Please find our answers here below:

• There are many signs and marks in different colors in this manuscript and please make sure whether this manuscript is the final version or not.

We provide two versions of the manuscript to the editor. The one you received contains the marks that indicate where changes requested by former reviewers have been done. There is a “clean” version of the manuscript as well. In the present version of the manuscript, you will still find marks in different colors, these cover both the changes requested by you, as the changes requested by the two other reviewers and the editor.

• Improvement is needed on the figure to show the authors' purpose clearly. For example, what is the difference between heat maps between the two human shapes in each picture? I think more explanation is needed.

We have modified the text to clarify => Original text : Mapping of bodily reactions to A: ``Other children yelling"; B: ``Loud and intense sounds"; and C: ``Scraping and screeching sounds". The body map to the left shows answers grouped according to the three main body areas while the body map to the right shows distinct answers.

Modified text: Mapping of bodily reactions to A: ``Other children yelling"; B: ``Loud and intense sounds"; and C: ``Scraping and screeching sounds". In each picture, the body map to the left shows children’s answers as synthesized into three main areas: head, mid-body, and lower-body. The body map to the right shows children’s detailed answers representing all body parts children circled in.  

As per request of Reviewer 2, we have also moved this body of text to the caption above Figure 3.

• Also, the numbers and characters in Figure 4 are too tiny to be seen clearly and easily. 

We have increased the size of the characters in these figures now.

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

1- Again the references are not ordered. The last cited reference before line 72 is [30], then the referenced number jumps to [34, 35, 47] and Refs. [31, 32, 33] are not cited in the manuscript text. It is highly recommended to use software such as Mendeley or End Note for citation to avoid such errors.

2- In line 90, change "phenomenons" to "phenomena" because "phenomena" is the plural form of "phenomenon."

3- Use the tables and figures after the first time they are mentioned in the text. Change the position of Table 1, Table 2, Fig. 2.

4- In Figure 3, the captions are on top of the figure or the bottom?  If ” Mapping of bodily reactions to A: “Other children yelling"; B: “Loud and intense sounds"; and C: “Scraping and screeching sounds". The body map to the left shows answers grouped according to the three main body areas while the body map to the right shows distinct answers.” is part of the caption, write it with “Heat-maps of bodily reactions to the three types of sounds.”

It is suggested an English editor, check the quality of the English Language.

Author Response

Reviewer 2: 1- Again the references are not ordered. The last cited reference before line 72 is [30], then the referenced number jumps to [34, 35, 47] and Refs. [31, 32, 33] are not cited in the manuscript text. It is highly recommended to use software such as Mendeley or End Note for citation to avoid such errors.

Thank you for your thoughtful revision. We have revised the citation order and removed uncited references. As per request of the editor, some additional references have also been added to the manuscript.

2- In line 90, change "phenomenons" to "phenomena" because "phenomena" is the plural form of "phenomenon."

              The word “phenomenon” has been changed to “phenomena”

3- Use the tables and figures after the first time they are mentioned in the text. Change the position of Table 1, Table 2, Fig. 2.

We have changed the disposition of the tables in the text to fit them directly after they are introduced. Unfortunately, due to figure size and where they are introduced in the text, none of the three figures fit right directly under the text that mentions them. Instead, they appear at the top of the next page.

4- In Figure 3, the captions are on top of the figure or the bottom?  If ” Mapping of bodily reactions to A: “Other children yelling"; B: “Loud and intense sounds"; and C: “Scraping and screeching sounds". The body map to the left shows answers grouped according to the three main body areas while the body map to the right shows distinct answers.” is part of the caption, write it with “Heat-maps of bodily reactions to the three types of sounds.”

              We have moved that part of the text to be above the figure, along side with the rest of the caption. Note that the caption was also slightly modified to comply to a request by reviewer 1.

Reviewer 3 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

Thank you for the opportunity to review this revised manuscript, and for taking on my previous comments. Below are some minor comments to further improve the manuscript.

Table 1: For the questions "When there’s a lot of noise, what do you do?" and "How have you been feeling in school in the past few days?" there is no corresponding answer in the answer column. Is this because they are open-ended? If so, can you add this in to the answer column, e.g., open-ended answer or free response? Or are these headings for the following questions? If so, can you indent the following questions to make it clear that these are not separate questions.

Line 195: Please change commas to decimal points in the percentages.

Line 261: Use a capital F for Figure 3.

Line 254-260: What are the results of the comparisons? i.e., is the mid or low body feeling more prominent for each sound?

Line 485: Please add a space between "noise" and "[2,3]"

Author Response

Reviewer 3 : Thank you for the opportunity to review this revised manuscript, and for taking on my previous comments. Below are some minor comments to further improve the manuscript.

Thank you for your thoughtful revision.

Table 1: For the questions "When there’s a lot of noise, what do you do?" and "How have you been feeling in school in the past few days?" there is no corresponding answer in the answer column. Is this because they are open-ended? If so, can you add this in to the answer column, e.g., open-ended answer or free response? Or are these headings for the following questions? If so, can you indent the following questions to make it clear that these are not separate questions.

              You are right, these are headings to the following sub questions.  We have indented the sub questions accordingly to make that clear.

Line 195: Please change commas to decimal points in the percentages.

We have replaced the three commas with points instead: overall 46.1% of the participants reported being girls, 44.1% being boys, while 5.9% chose the ``other" alternative.

Line 261: Use a capital F for Figure 3.

This has been changed: bodily reactions to the three types of sound are illustrated in Figure 3 in the form of a body heat-map

Line 254-260: What are the results of the comparisons? i.e., is the mid or low body feeling more prominent for each sound?

              We have added a precision in the manuscript: Chi-squared tests show that the bodily reactions in the mid-body and lower-body vary as a function of type of sound ($\chi^2(2,N=649) = 10.273, \rho = .006$ and $\chi^2(2,N=648) = 16.105, \rho < .001$). Post-hoc tests with a Bonferroni adjusted p-value of .006 show that the difference is significant for ``Loud and intense sounds" versus ``Scraping and screeching sounds" and for ``Other children yelling" versus ``Scraping and screeching sounds" for both mid- and lower-body areas ($\rho < .001$) with a more prominent feeling in the mid body and lower body for ``Scraping and screeching sounds" as compared to the other sounds.

Line 485: Please add a space between "noise" and "[2,3]"

We have added a space:  This corroborates some previous findings suggesting
girls are subjectively more affected by noise [2, 3].

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

The reviewer believes that the manuscript is suitable for publication.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

While the subject of this study is interesting, based on the following comments, the paper requires extensive editing.

- References are not ordered!!

- In line 16 where the first references are cited, the order of citations appears as [1, 7, 8] which seems incorrect. Ref. [2] is cited for the first time in line 88 after Ref. [56]. Moreover, In line 85, the format of the citation is not the same as the previous one.

- The citation format in this article deviates from the norm, as it includes an unusually high number of 14 citations for a single general sentence, which is atypical. (Line 27)

- The "Introduction" lacks coherence as it fails to provide a clear and specific explanation regarding the problems, the lack of investigation in the field, and the novelty of the study.

- In line 91, it is unclear what the author is referring to with the terms "classrooms with good/bad acoustics."

- In line 176, it is recommended to provide a concise explanation of the Chi-squared tests and the parameters considered in these tests.

- To gain insights from an acoustics perspective, it is suggested to measure the average noise level for each type of noise mentioned in Table 2. This measurement would be beneficial in determining the annoyance threshold experienced by students. Additionally, to enhance accuracy, it would be helpful to measure the dominant frequency range associated with each noise.

-  In line 214, the parameters χ and ρ are introduced for the first time, but their definitions are not provided or explained.

-  The tables in the article are not properly placed. Tables 5-9 are presented consecutively without sufficient explanations accompanying each table.

- The English proficiency in the article is inadequate, resulting in a lack of coherence and understanding.

- Line 27, it is suggested to write “Massonnié et al.” instead of “Massonnié and al.”

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Review of the manuscript: Student’s self-reported experience od soundscape: the link between noise, psychological and physical well-being

The manuscript reports on the results of a questionnaire administered to primary and secondary school students to investigate their perception of the sound environment and the associated reactions. The rationale of the study is sound, and also the practical implications. I have a few comments aimed to strengthen the manuscript by enhancing its clarity.

General comments:

-        The manuscript would benefit from the addition of an Appendix or Supplementary material or Table, reporting the wording of the questions together with the response format. Even though the same questionnaire used by Waye et al. (2013) was employed in the present study, including explicitly the questions would clarify the findings. For instance, it is not clear from Sec. 2.2 that the question “When you hear other children being angry and yelling, do you feel it inside you or in your body?” is part of the questionnaire.

-        Results: please replace some of the Tables with Figures, that could be more easily interpreted by the readers. As an example, Likert scale results could be represented using stacked bar plots.

Detailed comments:

Line 17: background noise levels recommended in classrooms are definitely under 40-60 dB(A). See for instance the WHO guidelines, suggesting a noise level of 35 dB(A) in unoccupied conditions.

Line 24: please include references other than those already cited in Lines 20-21

Line 26: as the sentence refers to acute exposure to noise, include among the references only those dealing with this exposure condition (e.g., ref 20 and 26 refer to chronic exposure).

Line 181: replace “rho” with “alpha”

The English is fine, no language editing is required.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review this interesting work. The paper is well written and well referenced throughout. Attached are some minor comments and suggested revisions. Please also consider if some of the tables could be presented as figures for quicker visual interpretation.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf