Arc 323 human studies in architecture fall 2018 lecture 5-research methods 2

Faculty of Engineering and Technology
Department of Architectural Engineering
ARC 323 : Human Studies in
Architecture
Fall 2018
Dr. Yasser Mahgoub
Lecture 5 - Research Methods 2

Research Methods
1. Observing Physical Traces
2. Observing Environmental Behavior
3. Focused Interviews
4. Standardized Questionnaires
5. Games

Research Methods:
Focused Interviews

• Asking questions in research means posing
questions systematically to find out what
people think, feel, do, know, believe, and
expect. Focused interviews are particularly
suited to the needs of researchers interested
in reactions to particular environments.
Research Methods:
Focused Interviews

• Focused Interviews can be used with
individuals or groups to find out in depth:
– how people define a concrete situation,
– what they consider important about it,
– what effects they intended their actions to have in the
situation, and
– how they feel about it.
Research Methods:
Focused Interviews

• The Interview Guide
• The interview guide is a loose conceptual
map; a set of topics, elements, patterns,
and relationships that the interviewer
tentatively intends to cover.
Research Methods:
Focused Interviews

• Objectives of Focused Interviews
– Definition of the Situation
• An individual’s definition of a situation is the way he or she sees and
interprets it. This definition influences the way he or she responds to that
event.
• Knowing how participants define a situation – the meaning they give to it –
helps to to interpret data gathered through other methods, no matter how
unreasonable the respondent’s definition sounds.
Research Methods:
Focused Interviews

• Objectives of Focused Interviews
– Strength of Respondents’ Feelings
Designers can better control the side effects of their decisions if they know the
strength of respondents’ feelings about these decisions.
– Intentions
Only by asking the actors what their intentions are can researchers distinguish
conscious intent from unintentional side effects.
Research Methods:
Focused Interviews

• Basic Characters of Focused Interviews
– Persons interviewed are known to have been involved in a particular
concrete situation
– The researcher has carried a situational analysis to provisionally
identify hypothetically significant elements, patterns, and processes of
the situation.
– The researcher develops an interview guide, setting forth major areas
of inquiry and hypotheses.
– It is an effort to ascertain persons definitions of situations.
Research Methods:
Focused Interviews

Research Methods:
Focused Interviews
 Focused Interviews Probes
 The probe is a major focused-interview tool that is used by
the interviewer to find out if a respondent’s definition of
the situation differs from the hypothesized one.
 Probes are primarily questions that interviewers interpose
to get a respondent to clarify a point, to explain further
what he meant, to continue talking, or to shift the topic.

Research Methods:
Focused Interviews Probes
Probe Purpose
Addition probes Encouragement
Body movement
Attentive silence
Flow
Reflecting probes Echo
Question-to-question
Attentive listening
Nondirection
Transitional probes Cued
Reversion
Mutation
Range
Situational probes Re-presentation
Walk-through
Reconstruction
Specificity
Emotional probes Feeling
Projection
Attentive Listening
Depth
Personal probes Self-description
Parallel
Context

• 1- Addition Probes to Promote Flow
• Addition probes urge respondents to continue talking by conveying the
researcher’s interest in what is being said.
– Encouragement Uh-huh, I see, Yes, Good, That’s interesting, I understand
– Body movement nodding of head, leaning forward, looking directly at the
respondent, hand to chin
– Attentive silence wait for respondent to begin speaking
Research Methods:

• 2- Reflecting Probes to Achieve Non-
direction
• The interviewer uses probes to see that the discussion covers all the
hypothesized topics, leaving room for the respondent to raise additional one.
– Question-to-question
– Echo Probe repeat in the form of a question the respondent’s last
phrase.
– Attentive-listening listen to the implied meaning and repeat as a
question
Research Methods:

• 3- Transitional Probes to Extend Range
• The range of an interview is the number of topics it covers relevant to the
respondent and to the situation. Probes extend range by making certain that
the topics listed in the guide are discussed.
– Cued a remark or an allusion to ease the interviewee into a new
topic.
– Reversion a superficial connection to bring up a topic insufficiently
covered
– Mutation blatantly change the subject
Research Methods:

• 4- Situational Probes to Encourage
Specificity
• Specificity is a respondent’s ability to state with precision which elements in a
situation he or she reacted to and in what way.
– Re-presentation photographs or drawings
– Walk-through ask questions while walking through the environment
that is the topic of the interview
– Reconstruction ask respondents to think back to particular events in a
place
Research Methods:

• 5- Emotional Probes to Increase Depth
• Depth in a focused interview is the degree to which the respondent’s feelings
about a situation are explored. Interviewers use emotion probes to determine
how strongly a person feels about a response he has given.
– Feeling feel or feeling in a question
– Projection ask about feelings of another hypothetical person
– Attentive-listening listen to the implied meaning and make it implicit
Research Methods:

• 6- Personal Probes to Tie in Context
• Reactions to environments have, as a rule, a dual chain of causes, the
environment and characteristics of the reacting person.
– Self-description request respondent to describe themselves and why
they react the way they do
– Parallel request respondents to find parallel situations in their
own lives
Research Methods:

• Focused Interviews in Groups
• In a group, interviewers face many of the same problems and use many of
the same probes as they do with individuals. You have to keep the flow of
discussion moving, remind people of specific details you are interested in,
and maintain sufficient range.
Research Methods:

• The Leader Effect
• In most groups of people one or two persons will inevitably emerge as
louder, more dominant, or more opinionated. Such a person can easily take
over an interview, divert it from its focus, and inhibit others from talking.
– Appeal for equal time
– Attention to body language
– Asking for a vote
Research Methods:

Research Methods:
Standardized Questionnaire

• Standardized questionnaires are used to discover regularities
among groups of people by comparing answers to the same
set of questions asked of a large number of people.
• Questionnaires can be delivered by mail or administered
over the phone or in person by interviewers trained to ask
the questions in the same way.
• Questionnaires provide a useful data when investigators
begin with a very well defined problem, knowing what major
concepts and dimensions they want to deal with.
• Analysis of questionnaire responses can provide precise
numbers to measure variables, e.g. degrees, percentages,
.etc.
Research Methods:

• The Use of Questionnaires
– Begin with hypotheses about which attributes relate to each other.
(Example: Type of previous dwelling influences satisfaction with
apartment living.)
– Carry out particularly thorough preliminary diagnostic research. Use
focused interviews and observation methods to determine how people
similar to intended questionnaire respondents define a situation: what
is important; what names they use for places and things; the types of
answers they give.
– Structure and develop the questionnaire to include all the variables.
– Pretest the questionnaire with more people like the expected
respondents by administering it to self-conscious respondents while
asking them to comment on it.
– Administer the questionnaire and analyze the results.
Research Methods:

• Qualities of the Method
–A great deal of findings in a short time.
–Resulting quantitative data often convince other people of
arguments qualitative data do not.
• Control of the investigation:
– How it begins
– The ordering of questions and answers
– How it ends
– Efficiency, cost, and time
– Repetition and ease of comparison of responses from different responses
and with other situations
– Build cumulative body of data
Research Methods:

• Intrusiveness
– Respondents can change and distort answers
– Respondents can be directed by the questions themselves
• Convincing rigor
– Quantitative analysis of questionnaire data contributes precision to
knowledge
– Make research convincing to others
Research Methods:

1. Rapport (agreement)
– Research results are as valid as the relationship between interviewer and
respondent is open and non-defensive. Rapport can be established by introducing
oneself and the purpose of the interview clearly, honestly, realistically, and without
threatening the respondents. Start the questionnaire with questions that request
positive answers to achieve friendly atmosphere.
2. Conditioning
– Early questions can influence the way respondents answer later ones. A good rule
to follow is to go from general to specific questions.
3. Fatigue
– Respondents get tired after half an hour or so.
– To maximize information and minimize fatigue, try to group questions relating to a
topic
– Avoid confusing respondents with irrelevant questions.
Research Methods:

• Precoding Responses
– Open ended questions (free-responses) are time consuming and costly to analyze.
– Precoding is to partition possible response alternatives into a set of categories for
respondents to choose from.
• Nominal
– Yes and no
– Gender
– Religion
• Ordinal
– Information (age)
– Attitudes (opinion)
– Meaning
• Rank-ordering of Items
Research Methods:

Research Methods:
Ordinal Questions
Information
Attitudes Meaning

Research Methods:
Rank-ordering of Items

• Visual Responses
– Some cognitive, expressive, and perceptual information about respondents’ physical
surroundings may be better expressed visually than verbally, through nonprecoded techniques,
such as freehand area maps, base-map additions, drawings, photographs taken by respondents
and games.
– Cognitive maps are the mental pictures of the surroundings that people use to structure the
way they look at, react to, and act in their environment. If designers know how people who
use their environments see them, they can better control the side effects of design decisions.
 Freehand Maps (Kevin Lynch)
 Additions to Base Maps (Zeisel and Griffin)
 Drawings (Sanoff and Barbour)
 Photographs
Research Methods:

Research Methods:
Freehand maps Drawings

Research Methods:
Additions to Base Maps

• Games
– To develop games through which respondents express themselves by making a
series of linked choice.
– One of the oldest such games is Wilson’s “Neighborhood Game”. Alternative
degrees of attributes such as neighborhood physical quality and sanitation services
each have a price tag attached. Respondents are given a set of chips representing
the total amount of money they can spend to “buy” the amenities on the game
board. With the amount of play money they have, they are forced to chose among
attractive alternatives, not all of which they can afford. Their final judgements
express not a linear series of individual choices but a balanced set of simultaneous
ones.
– Another game developed by Zeisel and Griffin is the “Dwelling Unit Floor Plan
game” in which respondents make a series of simple design decisions to develop
their housing unit.
Research Methods:
Games

Research Methods:
Gaming Simulation

Dr. Yasser Mahgoub
Architectural Theory 1: Human
Environmental Factors
Research Methods:
Gaming Simulation

Arc 323 human studies in architecture fall 2018 lecture 5-research methods 2

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