University students’ perception of the sound environment at their home study places

People are staying indoors for most of their time (on average 90%), where they are exposed to different environmental stimuli (e.g., noise, temperature) that are related to the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) factors (Bluyssen, 2020). Students in higher education spend substantial time at their study places (at home or educational buildings) for their study-related activities (Beckers et al., 2016a). Noise is one of these environmental stimuli that could affect the students’ health and comfort. It was found that noise affected students’ health (Tristan-Hernandez et al., 2017), perception (Dzhambov et al., 2021), and performance (Shu & Ma, 2019). However, previous studies mainly focused on the students’ sound environment perception in classroom settings, while few (e.g., (Ramu et al., 2021) and (Beckers et al., 2016b)) investigated their perception in their study places.

This study aims to identify the sound sources that students are exposed to at their home study places. Furthermore, this study shows to which extent students are satisfied with the sound environment of their study places.