Profiling Students Based on the Overlap between IEQ and Psychosocial Preferences of Study Places

Abstract

Research has shown that students differ in their preferences of indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and psychosocial aspects of their study places. Since previous studies have mainly focused on identifying these preferences rather than investigating the different profiles of students, this study aimed at profiling students based on their IEQ and psychosocial preferences of their study places. A questionnaire was completed by 451 bachelor students of the faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment. A TwoStep cluster analysis was performed twice separately. First, to cluster the students based on their IEQ preferences, and second based on their psychosocial preferences. This resulted in three clusters under each cluster model. Then, the overlap between these two models was determined and produced nine unique profiles of students, which are: (1) the concerned perfectionist, (2) the concerned extrovert, (3) the concerned non-perfectionist, (4) the visual concerned perfectionist, (5) the visual concerned extrovert, (6) visual concerned non-perfectionist, (7) the unconcerned introvert, (8) the unconcerned extrovert, and (9) the unconcerned non-perfectionist. A number of variables was found to be significantly different among these profiles. This study’s outcome indicates that studying the overlap between IEQ and psychosocial preferences is required to understand the different possible profiles of students.