Abstract
In indoor climate studies, a recurrent problem is to quantify discomfort and annoyance due to disturbing factors in the building. The typical approach is the questionnaire survey. One difficulty is to select attributes that adequately reflect people’s conceptions of environmental factors. Discomfort, disturbance and annoyance have different meanings for different population groups. Furthermore, environmental variables are difficult to scale quantitatively as they are perceived. Since we design our buildings with regard to capacities and abilities of individuals to cope with them we are obliged to consider the opinions of people. As a consequence, a quantification of reactions has to rely on verbal reports or other kinds of “subjective judgments.” The methods used must give quantitative information about psychological variables on a satisfactory level of measurement (interval or ratio scales) as a base for reliable conclusions about dose-response relationships. Scales of discomfort or annoyance from different populations will always give different units of measurement and such scales cannot be compared unless the scales are calibrated.
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Berglund, B., Lindvall, T. (1992). Questionnaires in Exposure and Effect Assessment in the Field. In: Knöppel, H., Wolkoff, P. (eds) Chemical, Microbiological, Health and Comfort Aspects of Indoor Air Quality — State of the Art in SBS. Eurocourses: Chemical and Environmental Science, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8088-5_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8088-5_17
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