Problem statement

Our team is developing a new exploratory data analysis tool for the Center for the Built Environment (CBE), a research group at the College of Environmental Design. CBE aims to inform the building industry of new building technologies and design strategies that improve efficiency as well as occupant comfort.

One of CBE's research projects, the Occupant Satisfaction Survey, uses an online survey to collect data regarding occupant satisfaction in relation to a variety of metrics — such as air quality, acoustics and lighting. Currently, the survey data can be viewed via an online reporting tool, which provides single question charts as well as filtering capability, or by manually exporting to a .csv file for analysis in a statistical application.

However, without exporting the data, researchers currently cannot:

• explore relationships between how respondents answered questions of interest;
• compare responses in two or more survey implementations, such as in a longitudinal or cross-sectional study; or
• quickly and easily investigate hypotheses and discover unexpected trends.

By combining the familiar crosstab format with the charts used in the reporting tool, ArchMiner is intended to meet these analysis needs by allowing researchers to visually compare question responses within as well as across survey datasets. This will allow them to more easily investigate hypotheses and observe trends in building occupant satisfaction with respect to various building technologies with having to go through the tedious set up required by statistical applications.