Methods of research into privacy in housing

Abstract

Systematic research through residents' attitudes, preferences, etc. in dwellings has become the dominant mode of environmental research into building design. Most of these works have been directed at the evaluation of buildings in terms of user satisfaction. Some have proposed, developed and applied procedures for identifying the factors contributing to resident satisfaction in dwellings. Others critically question the extent of the usefulness and appropriateness of the theoretical and methodological ground of this approach. The aim of this paper is to identify an appropriate approach for measuring and evaluating amount of privacy in apartments. The method which used is review of documents related to our issue and the technique which applied in this way is content analysis. The results shows that research into privacy, for the sake of adequacy, must treat people as subjects as well as objects. For research into privacy in man-environment transactions, or for understanding privacy needs and satisfaction with design neither the people itself nor the setting alone are sufficient. It seems that the congruence model is a particularly appropriate approach for studying privacy in design.