METHODS

A soundscape survey with a closed-ended questionnaire constructed from semantic attributes raised during the discussion was used to collect data about how they enjoyed the film. One

2. METHODS

The study was designed to use both off-site and in situ surveys. The off-site method was carried out as a focus group discussion (FGD) to collect attributes associated with cinema and the activity of watching movies. The discussion during the FGD was then extracted into semantic attributes to construct a questionnaire for the in-situ survey.

2.1. The participants

Thirty-five visually impaired people participated in both the FGD and in-situ survey. The participants are junior and senior high school students of the Foundation of Education for Blind Children (YPAB) of Surabaya. Students were selected because (1) their ages are passionate about watching movies (2) a collaboration with an institution is mandatory for a project that requires a large group of participants. Even though there are approximately 4 million visually impaired people in Indonesia, they are mostly less-educated laypeople who stay home due to their less orientation and mobility ability. Meanwhile, students are adequately taught orientation and mobility to carry out activities independently. During the in-situ survey, a participant was accompanied by a sighted person. The accompanying person guided them to enter the cinema, became the story-teller, and carried out an interview to help participants fill in the questionnaire. The accompanying persons were undergraduate students of Petra Christian University who took a class of service-learning.

The project plan of partnering with YPAB was presented to the Independent Research Ethics Committee of the Ministry of Research and Technology and Higher Education of the Republic of Indonesia. Approval was granted by the Body of National Unity, Politics, and Community Protection (Bakesbangpol), a body under the Surabaya City Government, with licence number 070/6619/436.85/2017, dated 19 July 2017. Official approval letters to include publishing images taken during the project.were also received from the Headmaster of YPAB dated 1 August 2017.

2.2. The questionnaire

The FGD carried out prior to the survey was designed as an open-ended question and answer

survey. All in situ participants involved in the FGD. They were asked questions about whether they

like to watch movies, how to watch, what instruments to watch, and what kinds of movies they like

and do not like. At the end of the FGD, they were asked to describe the activity of watching movies

with their sentences, which were next extracted into semantic attributes. The semantic attributes that

emerged in the FGD were used to construct a closed-ended questionnaire. The use of attributes into

a questionnaire belongs to a method of direct elicitation, known as individual vocabulary techniques,

introduced by Bech and Zacharov [16]. The method uses the vocabulary developed by the particular

subject and a set of principal components representing the common attributes, which is identified

using statistical procedures. A perceptual measurement of sound quality is a multidimensional

problem that includes some individual auditory attributes. Therefore, it is possible to elicit and use individual attributes emerging from a mixture of interviews and personal experiences.

The questionnaire was constructed in two sections. Section one was a straightforward bipolar semantic scale of −1 0 1. Scale −1 is the coding given for attributes emerging during the FGD, 0 for the neutral response, and 1 for the antonym of the attributes. The use of three-point scales is confirmed to be good enough [17] and validated by Mediastika et al. [18]. The 3-point scale, instead of the typical 5 or 7 points by Likert, was used to simplify the questionnaire reading by the sighted interviewer that is helping the visually impaired participant to complete. Using the standard scale would lengthen the question’s reading by the interviewer, extend the time an interviewee would have to grasp the issue, and lengthen the time to choose an accurate answer. Through the FGD, 12 attributes were elicited in which each was validated statistically using the communality test (Table1 1). Section two consisted of one question only, which ask participants to rate the comfort levels in the two selected locations.

Table 1. Semantic attributes elicited from the FGD, which used to build the questionnaire

Attributes

(-1) Neutral

(0)

Antonym (1)

Context 1 Comfortable - Uncomfortable Soundscape

2 Fun - Boring Soundscape

3 Clear - Unclear Soundscape

4 Soft - Loud Soundscape

5 Clear - Unclear Storyline

6 Interesting - Not interesting Storyline 7 Confusing - Enlightening Storyline

8 Entertaining - Dull Storyline

9 Understand - Not understand Storyline

10 Happy - Unhappy Companion

11 Understand - Not understand Companion

12 Confusing - Enlightening Companion

2.3. The location

There were two locations selected for the in-situ survey. The first survey was conducted in the

music room of YPAB, and a movie titled “Perahu Kertas” in English “Paper Ships” was played. It

was a romance movie. The film genre was selected by the participants beforehand. In the music

room, they all sat on the carpeted lining floor side by side with the accompanying persons. A laptop

connected to an LCD (and a screen) and two JBL LSR2325P speakers in two corners of the room

were used to produce the film and the sound (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The seating plot in the music room and a snapshot of the activity

The second activity was held in a cinema in a shopping mall, namely Marvel City in Surabaya, where a movie titled “Bebas” in English “Freedom” was played. The second movie could not be freely selected as it depended on the movies that were played at that period by the cinema management. However, as participants are teenagers, again, a romance movie that is easy to grasp by the audience was selected. During the FGD, some participants expressed that they scared of horror movies and not very keen on action movies, but they all love romance movies.

Experience in dealing with cinema management to order theater can be shared here. It was not easy to invite a visually impaired person to watch movies as the accompanying person or storyteller would have to whisper to the visually impaired, disturbing other visitors. It was even more challenging to deal with the management for a project with large participants. The research team has to book the whole cinema for the project, which caused the project relatively high in cost. But on the other end, we had a benefit of plotting the seating between participants with an adequate distance so the whispering activity between a participant and the accompanying person would not disturb other participants (Figure 2a and 2 b). While watching the two movies, participants and the accompanying persons enjoy snacks and drinks as regular people do while watching movies. The environment was designed to be similar to the typical activity of watching films. The two movies took approximately an hour and a half each.

Figure 2: The seating plot in the cinema and a snapshot of the activity

2.4. The soundscape

The survey was conducted after each movie was finished. The questionnaire of the music room was taken in the room. At the cinema, it has to be taken at the cinema lobby because the theater would soon be cleaned for regular visitors for the next film session. The survey took approximately 15 minutes as participants need sufficient time to consider each answer.

2.4. The sound pressure level

During movies, the Sound Pressure Level (SPL) at 3 positions in each location were measured

using NTi-SL2 with M2211 microphone Class 1 frequency response by IEC 61672 and ANSI S1.4

that had been calibrated. To illustrate the general noise level at a designated place, the SPL is

measured in LAeq (10 minutes) and LAFmax. Considering that the film is usually quite loud, LAFmin

is not discussed.