A MODEL OF HOUSING:Th e I n s t i t u t ion a l L eve l

B y Se ra f ín M erca d oPa t r i c ia Or t eg a Ga b r ie la Lu n a

Cesa reo Es t ra d aa n d

E l i z a b e t h L óp ezUN AM

A MODEL OF HOUSING:

SummaryThis paper deals with a model of housing satisfaction based on the concept of housing habitability. The model is based on both an empirical search of housing satisfaction variables, as used by subjects to describe their homes, obtained through Kelley’s Grid technique, and on theoretical assumptions, both of which led to the variables that were finally included in the model. Multidimensional Scaling techniques and Path Analysis Modeling were used in it’s development.The dependent variable was housing habitability, which is defined as the degree of correspondence between the subject’s needs as a member of a social group and the household’s attributes. Three groups of variables emerged to explain habitability: symbolic, emotional and operative. The nodes (the variables that affected directly habitability, collecting the effects of the other independent variables) were: pleasure, meaning and operativity. Pleasure was affected by the activation and control variables, meaning by value fulfillment and operativity by functionality and privacy, thus constituting the mentioned groups of variables. All this variables pertain to the cognition and evaluation of the inhabitants of their milieu. The results were very satisfactory in terms of the fit of data to the model, which is consistent with the constructs and postulates of a cognitive model proposed by the authors.We believe the quantitative theoretical model to be reasonable enough and that it advances our understanding of the relationship between man and its housing milieu providing for the development of insights as to how to improve it. Post occupancy evaluation (POE), pre design evaluation (PDE) and pre construction evaluation (PCE) can take advantage from the use of these scales.It is thought that further research should be headed toward relating this model to design and physical variables.

IntroductionWithin the environmental research approach, housing is considered as one of the fundamental human designed environments; being the one that provides the necessary shelter to the most basic social institution and the main primary group: “the family”. It is the general social construct of a type of building in whose structure we find sites for behavioral settings aimed at the activities carried out by the family group as such. It provides shelter and security for its members and a place for gathering and interacting in the different relevant sociocultural roles of the family. It is also a place for socialization of the younger members, for the satisfaction of many of the most fundamental biological needs, for interacting with the immediate social milieu and as a departing point for other transactions with society and the environment.

Sociologists and anthropologists agree that the family constitutes the group around which the complex web of society developed; beginning with the concept of clan, a cluster of genetically related families, down to the intricate set of interrelations that constitute modern social structure as we know it. Although its role as an institution varies with culture and, in the same group, it changes with time as different ways of organization are developed; it remains a central and very powerful social structure and force. It constitutes the basic channel for the transfer of culture and remains in most cases as a critical social relationship for its members; being one of the main aspects that mold ones identity.

Thus home, as a specific family-dwelling relation and housing, as the generic name for the organized ensemble of places for behavioral settings that shelter the family institution, become important concepts to be considered in the study of man-environment relations. We find the level of housing habitability as one of the chief contributors to quality of life (Monsalvo & Vital, 1998). It is also one of the aspects in which modern society often engenders insufficiency, leading to the well-known problems of homelessness, crowding, discord and disintegration. The keen lesson provided by “Pruitt Iggoe”, at St. Louis Missouri, and that has been repeated at innumerable places, including Mexico City’s “Tlaltelolco Housing Unit”, has alerted us to the importance of understanding the relationship between housing and both individual and social behavior.

The relation of users with their manmade environment, which includes housing, is considered in this paper as a hierarchy of types of interactions. It comprises the intercourse with objects, behavioral settings, institutional structures, structure-neighborhood relations and relations with the urban-rural milieu; each including the previous hierarchies as constituents and as we advance in the hierarchy, contact

relies less on immediate perceptual-motor interactions and more on imagery, memory and conceptual structures.

In this study, we worked at the institutional structure level, as we think it is the most relevant for the analysis of social impact of designed-constructed environments. However, we believe that the other levels should be studied as well, as they contribute to the overall effect of housing and allow other kinds of interventions.

Both, the designed-built environment and clothes are considered as interfaces between man and the natural climate, producing an internal milieu that is better fit for human survival and comfort. This feature of human designed-built environments made it possible for Homo Sapiens to emigrate from its mild weathered African surroundings, to almost all known ecosystems, including those that are extremely hostile, such as deserts and the tundra. Man has even visited environments, such as the moon, where no other living beings are known to exist, although for very short periods.

A second topic of great significance is that human built-designed environments create spaces that, filled with the right furniture an other objects, constitute behavioral settings where the society evolves the social activities programmed by the culture, pertinent to the different social structures (i. e.: institutions). That is, the designed-built environment also helps to regulate social relationships.

A third topic that we consider relevant in the elaboration of our model is that man has developed a new way of adaptation which, although incipient in other species, it has never been to the extent found in man. It implies the cultural transmission of experience, values and beliefs, and the design and use of tools that make adaptation possible through fitting the environment to human needs, rather than changing the organism through phylogenetic evolutionary processes to adapt itself to the environment. Tools, including man made environments, furniture and all kinds of useful objects and procedures, have made this sort of adaptation possible, making culture an alternate way of evolution that alters man’s fit by changing the behavioral pattern of relation with the milieu. Thus the shape and size of spaces, their interconnection with other spaces and the furniture and tools included suit them for the activities culturally expected to be carried out there, that is, making them synomorph (Barker & University of Kansas. Midwest Psychological Field Station., 1968). This is achieved through cultural evolution, which changes the relation of man to its milieu trough cultural practices and devises.

An important part of children’s socialization is learning how to behave properly in different behavioral settings. Advising kids about what to do and what not to in a specific place at a specific time informs them about

the values and the ways of the culture. Reinforcing or punishing feedback are dispensed in order to shape proper behavior for the setting, and cultures tend to be more tolerant with the younger ones until they become socialized. Certainly, settings change over historical time, both in environmental design and in the way people are expected to behave, as values, modes, technology and social organization change.

Housing quality is created relying on an election profile that people decide according to their needs and activities (Rapaport, 1985), understanding for election the process of increasing the congruity between these expectations and reality and decreasing incongruity, that is, the lack of fulfillment of the ideal.

Evaluation of the designed–constructed spaces has been one of Environmental Psychology’s great contributions(Bechtel, 1998). The development of the post occupancy evaluation methods, and latter in its history of the pre-design and the pre_construction evaluation procedures, have contributed significantly to the improvement of environmental design. However, research based on case studies has intrinsic difficulties with the detection of the relationships among variables that make up the base for theoretical developments and with establishing general models. This is due to the fact that a case is intrinsically individual, and thus has a fixed set of values for the variables that constitute the milieu. In this case it is not possible to alter the independent variables and observe the effect on the dependent ones, as they do not vary in such case, and controlling for extraneous variables, either experimentally or statistically.

Our approach is then to try to recognize the constituents of a general model by studying a sample of dwellings and obtaining from them a set of variables and their relationships, including the general satisfaction of the inhabitants. What we aimed to obtain then, is a model for inhabitability: the organization of the satisfaction with the dwelling’s inner structure in terms of the psychological processes involved (i.e.: behaviors, cognitions, emotions and decisions).

MethodSAMPLE234 subjects made up our sample, all residents of Mexico City and with an age 15. Our sampling procedure was intentional by fixed quota, the defining variables being sex, age and socioeconomic level.

Age was divided in three ranges.

1 15-30 years old2 31-50 years old3 50 years old

Table 1: Ages in the sample.

Socioeconomic level also had three.

An equal number of men and women was taken, 117 each.

High Family income $ 15,000.00 Middle Family income $ 2,000.00 and $ 15,000.00Low Family income $2,000.00

Table 2: Socioeconomic level of the sample (Mexican pesos per month).

Monthly Mexican Pesos

With these traits we got a table for the control of the class fixed quota intentional sampling of 3x3x2

SOCIAL CLASS

HIGH MIDDLE LOW

AGE MEN WOMEN MEN WOMEN MEN WOMEN

15--30 13 13 13 13 13 13

31--50 13 13 13 13 13 13

>51 13 13 13 13 13 13

Table 3: Distribution by age, sex and social of the class fixed quota intentional sampling.

VARIABLESThe following variables were defined.

DEPENDENT VARIABLE“Household Habitability”, understood as the degree in which the household satisfies to the expectations, needs, life patterns, and preferences of the user family.

INDEPENDENT VARIABLESF I R S T G R O U P

Pleasure: is the level of pleasure produced by the environment (in this case the household).

Activation: is the degree of arousal produced by the household’s level of stimulation and information.

Control: it refers to the degree of power the users have upon their household, its characteristics and activities.

S E C O N D G R O U P

Meaningfulness: The degree of symbolism ascribed to places and their features.

Values: is the number of different values fulfilled in each setting place within the household.

T H I R D G R O U P

Operativity: is the easiness with which the users act and displace themselves when faced with a common household task.

Privacy: is the control the users have over the information provided to others about themselves and over the information incoming from others.

Functionality: is the degree, in which the spatial distribution of setting places, their connections and furnishings are congruent with the decisions and behavioral sequences that are expected to take place in them.

O T H E R

Security: The perception of absence of risk factors.

Intelligibility: the effortlessness with which the housing structure could be understood.

Age: The age of the subjects.

Social Class: The social class level of the subjects

Gender: The sex of subjects

INSTRUMENTSWe used a preliminary study using Kelley’s (Kelly, 1955) “Grid Technique”, which was used with the names of the places for settings to obtain the dimensions subjects used to understand the household environment. This approach was complemented with variables derived from theoretical assumptions and from Merhabian and Russell’s (Mehrabian & Russell, 1974) work.

We tested the instruments with pilot samples, carried out item analysis and eliminated, modified or substituted the items that didn’t reach the criterion established an tested again in a new pilot sample; procedure that was carried out in an iterative way, until the items fulfilled the criteria established.

The whole observation instrument was constituted of several particular instruments, in the following way:

Demographic data: Recollected demographic attributes of the inhabitants and the households: Age, sex, socioeconomic level, education time, living in the household and density.

Instrument that measured the variables: In this case the instruments had the characteristics shown in the following table

Variable Number of Items

Scale type Split-half reliability

HABITABILITY 18 Semantic differential .754PLAESURE 10 Semantic differential .847AROUSAL 10 Semantic differential .756CONTROL 10 Semantic differential .808SAFETY 14 Lickert .621OPERATIVITY 17 Lickert .724PRIVACY 21 Lickert .630FUNCTIONALITY (Part I) 24 Lickert .750FUNCTIONALITY (Part II) 66 Increasing interval from 1 to 10 .621MEANINGFULNESS 18 Lickert .780INTELIGIBILITY 30 Dichotomous .553VALUES 70 Semantic differential .858

Table 4: Reliability for each instrument.

PROCEDUREThe developed instruments, were applied to 234 subjects that fulfilled the attributes established in table 3. We used advanced undergraduate students to for the application. Subjects were informed about the importance of the research that was being carried out for the future design of housing, which we expected, would motivate them to answer accurately. Subjects were surveyed at their homes, which were selected by filling up the attributes that were required by the sampling criteria.

RESULTS AND DISSCUSSIONAs a first approach Kruskal’s multidimensional scaling was applied to the correlation matrix of the tests (See figure 1). This was in order to prove our hypothesis that habitability was central to the model and to explore its structure. After a first run, we eliminated safety and intelligibility, as they produced degenerate solutions. After this, we obtained a very satisfactory model in terms of stress level.

A=HABITABILITY

B=PLEASURE C=AROUSAL D=CONTROL

E=SAFETY F=OPERATIVITY E=PRIVACY

H=FUNCTIONALITY I=MEANINGFULNESS J=VALUES

figure 1: Multi Dimensional Scaling Model.

As you can see, variables organize themselves in three coherent groups that make a great deal of psychological sense. The fact that all the groups are in one side indicates that the model indicates a clear differentiation between the independent variables and the dependent one and suggests that there are some unexplored relationships between the independent variables. Some of them are probably cited in the relevant literature, but will not be a concern for this paper.

We can establish also that three variables have a direct effect on habitability, that is: pleasure, meaningfulness and operativity. We find that the rest probably exert their effect on habitability through them.

The first group is identified as an emotional factor that includes pleasure as the pivot and arousal and control as variables that exert their effect through pleasure. The second group is identified as a symbolic factor with meaningfulness as the pivot and values as the variable that exerts its effect through meaningfulness. The last group was an Action oriented factor with operativity as the pivot and functionality and privacy as variables that exert their effect through operativity.

We believe that this model offers an interesting theory about the factors that affect the perception, cognition and evaluation of the household environment, thus we proceeded to test it through further analyses.

We ran a hierarchical cluster analysis, in order to ascertain that the clusters were congruent with the model that we perceived in the multidimensional scaling. The results confirmed our idea, as we could ratify our thesis, that is, the groupings did correspond to the above stated ones, as well as the hierarchies.

We then proceeded to run regression tests of the groups: one with habitability as the dependent variable and all the others, including the ones eliminated from the multidimensional scaling, and we found that only four variables had an effect on habitability; that is, pleasure, meaningfulness, operativity and arousal. Arousal’s significance was not congruent with the model, but latter we found out that the reason was that its effect was not linear on pleasure, but parabolic, as stated in the research around this issue in the literature. When we introduced the square of arousal on the set of independent variables, its effect on habitability disappeared and it got to be stronger upon pleasure.

We then ran tests with each pivot as dependent variable and the others as independent. The structure kept being congruent with the model, and we confirmed the finding achieved through the multidimensional scaling.

Then we proceeded to structure a path analysis model using these regressions, which is the one we show in the figure 2.

figure 2: Path Analysis of Housing Habitability.

These results were astonishing even to us, as the percentage of the variance explained was incredibly high and the probabilities in the analyses of variance were extremely low. Thus we believe that through this approach we got a good model.

The advantage of a model as this is that it explains the way people relate to the interior of their households as a whole. It provides a set of variable

through which the effect of architectonic variables can be ascertained, and a set of standardized tests, trough which post-occupancy, pre-design and pre-construction evaluations can be carried out. This might help researchers to be able to compare different case studies profitably.

ConclusionsWe have obtained an excellent model of the way people cognize their relationship to their households. The model includes aspects related to emotions, to symbolism and to behavior of the inhabitants. We believe that the model might be generalized to the evaluation of settings and institutional habitat structures in general.

The model is congruent with a cognitive model in which subjects perceive and evaluate their environment, emitting emotional reactions that would include the three dimensions accepted by most modern theorists about emotion.

We think this model could be further developed by trying to find its relationship with design and physical variables, such as spatial syntax, climate, illumination and sound, among other.

We expect the approach to be useful for practitioners in post occupancy evaluation (POE), pre design evaluation (PDE) and pre construction evaluation (PCE). Research that has found a positive relation between habitability, as we measure it, and the family relations' realm of quality of life, has provided further validation to the model.

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