Investigation of the listening environment of classrooms for elderly people using speech intelligibility tests

The ultimate goal of the present study is to establish the acoustical performance standards of classroom for the elderly who are incomplete hearing people. As a pilot survey, the present study was conducted to investigate the listening environment and the actual condition of speech perception performance of education facilities for elderly, Acoustic performances of two education facilities for elderly in Cheongju were measured and questionnaire survey was done to elderly people. Also, speech intelligibility tests were undertaken by Consonant Vowel Consonant (CVC) and Phonetically Balanced Words (PBW) methods. The questionnaire survey showed that the elderly were satisfied with the listening environment of the educational facilities in general. Also, it was found that acoustical performances satisfy with the acoustic criteria of general classrooms in Korea. However, the results of the speech intelligibility test showed that the scores of elderly were significantly lower than twenties with normal hearing. It was also revealed that the scores are reduced as the age increases. Thus, it was concluded that the acoustical performance standards of educational facilities for the normal hearing were not suitable for educational facilities for the elderly.