Both the WHO and the EC advise on the use of L_(night) as the primary indicator for sleep disturbance. Still, a key question for noise policy is whether from a public health point of view it may be advantageous to use number of events in addition to L_(night). For some effects, it may be more effective to reduce the number of events above a certain threshold than to lower the overall exposure level of events. Based on data of a field study among 418 people, the current paper investigates the association between objectively measured sleep disturbance and the number of aircraft noise events. The data from this study are well suited for this purpose, since for every subject both the number and the level of events were available. The analysis focuses on mean motility during the sleep period, and addresses the question whether this motility can be predicted more accurately taking the number of passages into account. The results suggest that an increase in the average sound exposure level of events contributes more to motility than an increase in the number of events. However, it was also found that the influence of number of events increases with increasing levels of the events. Thus, to reduce motility as a proxy for restless sleep, it may be better to prevent the occurrence of events with high maximum levels than to reduce the overall number or level of events.
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