How to investigate differences in indoor environmental comfort and adaptation? Mixed methods research with patients

ABSTRACT

Ensuring hospitalized patients’ comfort requires understanding differences in comfort and adaptation to discomfort, as well as the role of the built environment therein. Shortcomings in this understanding result from limitations of existing research methods. Therefore the potential of a mixed methods research design to investigate when and why experiences of and adaption to (dis)comfort differ among hospitalized patients was explored. A convergent mixed methods case study was conducted in two hospital wards of a Belgian hospital. Qualitative data included interviews with 19 patients about their experiences and information about the patients at the two wards during the fieldwork; quantitative data included sensor measurements of indoor environmental quality parameters (i.e. illuminance and indoor temperature), a questionnaire among 238 patients about their assessment of the indoor conditions, and simulations of these conditions. Joint displays allowed comparing situations in which characteristics related to the patients or their setting differed in an integrated way. The displays provide an intermediate step between purely qualitative descriptions of comfort and adaptation and purely quantitative models that predict both. Scenarios that the joint displays allow identifying inform about characteristics that could improve these models, and about roles of the built environment in experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Adaptation
• comfort
• differences
• hospitalized patients
• mixed methods

Acknowledgements

We thank the participants for sharing their time and insights and the hospital management and staff for their support to conduct the research. We thank Patricia Elsen and Geert Bauwens for their practical support with the sensors.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this article. Ann Heylighen is part of the Editorial Board of Building Research & Information. The responsibility for the peer-review and editorial process for this article lies with the journal's other editors to avoid potential conflicts of interest. Ann has also no access to confidential information related to the editorial process.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a PhD fellowship (11A7521N) of the Research Foundation Flanders.