After showing two groups of schoolteachers a videotape of an eight-year-old boy, psychologists John Santrock and Russel Tracy found that the teachers’ judgment of the child ultimately depended on whether they had been told the child came from a divorced home or an intact home. The child was rated as less well-adjusted if the teachers thought he came from a home where the parents were divorced. This finding might seem inconsequential to the field of architecture, but for a profession that often relies on observational studies to evaluate a design’s effect on its users I argue that Santrock and Tracy’s study is one among many architects need to pay attention to.
An observational study*, like post-occupancy surveys, is a common method architects use to evaluate a design’s effect on its users. If done well observational studies can provide a wealth of valuable and reliable information. They do, however, have their pitfalls, most notably controlling for cognitive and selection biases. At the risk of limiting readership, I will illustrate these challenges by reviewing a specific observational study dealing with autism design. Although specific, the following example wrestles with the same difficulties that other observational studies in architecture wrestle with.
In 2008 Professor Magda Mostafa published a study that examined the effects of two architectural interventions (spatial sequencing and acoustics) on a group of children with autism. The observational phase of the study involved one control group and one study group. The duration of the study lasted one academic year. For spatial sequencing, Mostafa partitioned the study group’s classroom into different learning areas; one-on-one learning spaces, a group learning space, and one “escape” space. The acoustical “intervention involved the acoustical modification of a speech and language therapy room.” The control group’s classroom and speech therapy room remained unchanged. Those are the basics.
