Subjective Testing Experiment using the Semantic Differentials Paradigm for Sound Quality Assessment of Power Seat Mechanism Noise

This paper describes the development of a semantic differential test paradigm for evaluating product sound quality by a population of human subjects. The design of this specific experiment was also structured to test for a variety of expected common experimental errors. An investigation on the dependence of presentation order was executed by implementing both a fully balanced and a partially balanced design, and differences in subject populations were tested by independently testing two geographically separate populations. In order to conduct this testing, a general semantic-differentials graphical user interface (GUI) was written in MATLAB to present the specific stimuli to each subject in a unique specific sequence and extract a variety of semantic differential ratings for later statistical analyses. A discussion of the advantages and disadvantages for Semantic Differentials approach is presented as well as a discussion of the confidence in the resulting subject dataset.