Noise sensitivity: a systematic review of available instruments

The concept of noise sensitivity has been studied for more than 40 years now, but surprisingly, there has been no quantitative, meta-analytic, or systematic review of that domain. Routinely, noise sensitivity scales are used in psychology, engineering sciences and epidemiology, by using different instruments, not always based on the same concept. Therefore, our aim is to systematically review the psychometric properties of these instruments used to assess noise sensitivity. First, we collected documents on noise sensitivity in four languages (English, French, German and Korean) using specific search terms from 17 databases (PubMed, PsychINFO, Scopus, etc.), searching 13 conference proceedings (Internoise, Euronoise, ICBEN, etc.), and directly querying stakeholders (experts, federal ministries, etc.). After screening and categorizing the material, we assessed the quality of the noise-sensitivity scales found using the COSMIN checklist, a standard to evaluate outcome measures. The goals of this systematic review are (1) to show in what research and applied contexts noise sensitivity is measured, (2) what instruments with proven psychometric quality are currently available to measure it, and (3) how the usage of noise sensitivity scales differs between languages/cultures. [Registration of the systematic review: PROSPERO 2023 CRD42023440594. Research funded by "Fondation pour l'Audition", grant FPA RD-2022-6]