Lessons learned from 20 years of CBE’s occupant surveys

Abstract

Buildings influence diverse factors (e.g. health, wellbeing, productivity, and social connection). Occupants’ direct experiences with their indoor environments allow them to determine whether those spaces support or hinder the activities performed. However, most post-occupancy evaluations (POEs) focus solely on measuring people’s levels of comfort and environmental satisfaction. With increasing attention and interest in occupant health and wellness, there is a need to reassess whether occupant surveys are evaluating all they need to. An analysis is presented of data collected from a widely used online POE tool: The Center for the Built Environment’s (CBE) Occupant Survey (more than 90,000 respondents from approximately 900 buildings) in order to summarise its database and evaluate the survey’s structure and benchmarking metrics. A total of 68% of the respondents are satisfied with their workspace. Satisfaction is highest with spaces’ ease of interaction (75% satisfied), amount of light (74%), and cleanliness (71%). Dissatisfaction is highest with sound privacy (54% dissatisfied), temperature (39%), and noise level (34%). Correlation, principal component, and hierarchical clustering analyses identified seven distinct categories of measurement within the 16 satisfaction items. Results also revealed that a reduction in the scale may be possible. Based on these results, potential improvements and new directions are discussed for the future of POE tools. Practice relevance Assessing the measurement properties in a widely used occupant satisfaction survey reveals what is still useful to include and what may be missing from occupant surveys. These insights are increasingly important as built-environment research evolves and an increasing emphasis is placed on the physical and mental wellbeing of occupants and their productivity. Typical occupant satisfaction rates are reported for indoor environmental quality parameters and benchmark values. These can be used as references by practitioners and other survey tools. Based on this analysis, recommendations are made for different clustering and themes of measurement categories, along with the scope of additional questions that can be posed to occupants.