RESEARCH QUALITY I39

- Hypertherm 1996 4-5
- Hypertherm 1998

Occupant Comfort
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Air Thermal Spatial Privacy Lighting Office Building Support Satisfaction
Quality Comfort Comfort Comfort Noise Noise for Work
This figure shows that employee comfort has improved in all areas except Privacy, an

expected result as the space was designed more for communication and collaboration
than for isolation and solitary enclosure.

sultants’ process has paid off in terms of improved employee morale, measura-
ble improvement in team work processes, and a new and renewed organization
in a building that everyone loves.

This case study is based on the work ofjacquelz'ne C. Vischer, Ph.D., Professor
in the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Montreal, and
President of Buildings-in— Use, Montreal and Boston.

OVERVIEW

Useful research solves recognized problems and identifies new ones. Research
methods that increase researchers’ ability to do this improve the quality of
research. If you use methods that allow other people to criticize your research,
you can learn from them. If you can differentiate better research from worse
research, you can improve your own. If you know when your research findings
are applicable and when they are not, you can act on the world—you can use
the results in planning and design—~with greater control.

This chapter describes how seven quality criteria for research can be used
to achieve these ends:

Intersubjectivity Tenability Specifiability
Reliability Testability Generalizability
Validity