The term “biophilia” refers to the intrinsic affinity that humans have towards nature, natural elements and natural processes. Biophilic design theories suggest that the introduction or ...representation of natural characteristics or elements into the built environment can help enhance people’s health and wellbeing. Primary school buildings are important environments where children spend considerable time. However, there is limited evidence on the impact of their biophilic features on the children themselves and on perceptions of important facilitators of children’s wellbeing, such as teachers and parents. This research aims to investigate whether teachers and parents perceive children to have a preference or desire for specific biophilic characteristics in their school’s physical environment; and whether teachers perceive some biophilic characteristics as having an effect on children’s performance and behaviour. A framework for evaluating biophilic characteristics in primary schools was developed. Two case study primary schools in London and Bath (England, UK) were audited against this framework, and teachers and parents were surveyed. The results suggest that children do have a preference towards the specific biophilic features studied, which is stronger and more demanding when the exposure is higher. For some aspects, teachers’ perception of benefits is also susceptible to the quality of the environment itself.
There is a growing body of research into the total amount and patterns of sitting, standing and stepping in office-based workers and few studies using objectively measured sitting and standing. ...Understanding these patterns may identify daily times opportune for interventions to displace sitting with activity.
A sample of office-based workers (n = 164) residing in England were fitted with thigh-worn ActivPal accelerometers and devices were worn 24 hours a day for five consecutive days, always including Saturday and Sunday and during bathing and sleeping. Daily amounts and patterns of time spent sitting, standing, stepping and step counts and frequency of sit/stand transitions, recorded by the ActivPal accelerometer, were reported.
Total sitting/standing time was similar on weekdays (10.6/4.1 hrs) and weekends (10.6/4.3 hrs). Total step count was also similar over weekdays (9682 ± 3872) and weekends (9518 ± 4615). The highest physical activity levels during weekdays were accrued at 0700 to 0900, 1200 to 1400, and 1700 to 1900; and during the weekend at 1000 to 1700. During the weekday the greatest amount of sitting was accrued at 0900 to 1200, 1400 to 1700, and 2000 to 2300, and on the weekend between 1800 and 2300. During the weekday the greatest amount of standing was accrued between 0700 and 1000 and 1700 and 2100, and on the weekend between 1000 and 1800. On the weekday the highest number of sit/stand transitions occurred between 0800 to 0900 and remained consistently high until 1800. On the weekend, the highest number occurred between 1000 to 1400 and 1900 to 2000.
Office based-workers demonstrate high levels of sitting during both the working week and weekend. Interventions that target the working day and the evenings (weekday and weekend) to displace sitting with activity may offer most promise for reducing population levels of sedentary behaviour and increasing physical activity levels, in office-based workers residing in England.
Understanding the environmental determinants of physical activity in populations at high risk of inactivity could contribute to the development of effective interventions. Socioecological models of ...activity propose that environmental factors have independent and interactive effects of physical activity but there is a lack of research into interactive effects.
This study aimed to explore independent and interactive effects of social and physical environmental factors on self-reported physical activity in income-deprived communities.
Participants were 5,923 adults in Glasgow, United Kingdom. Features of the social environment were self-reported. Quality of the physical environment was objectively-measured. Neighbourhood walking and participation in moderate physical activity MPA on ≥5 days/week was self-reported. Multilevel multivariate logistic regression models tested independent and interactive effects of environmental factors on activity.
'Social support' (walking: OR:1.22,95%CI = 1.06-1.41,p<0.01; MPA: OR:0.79,95%CI = 0.67-0.94,p<0.01), 'social interaction' (walking: OR:1.25,95%CI = 1.10-1.42,p<0.01; MPA: OR:6.16,95%CI = 5.14-7.37,p<0.001) and 'cohesion and safety' (walking: OR:1.78,95%CI = 1.56-2.03,p<0.001; MPA: OR:1.93,95%CI = 1.65-2.27,p<0.001), but not 'trust and empowerment', had independent effects on physical activity. 'Aesthetics of built form' (OR:1.47,95%CI = 1.22-1.77,p<0.001) and 'aesthetics and maintenance of open space' (OR:1.32, 95%CI = 1.13-1.54,p<0.01) were related to walking. 'Physical disorder' (OR:1.63,95%CI = 1.31-2.03,p<0.001) had an independent effect on MPA. Interactive effects of social and physical factors on walking and MPA were revealed.
Findings suggest that intervening to create activity-supportive environments in deprived communities may be most effective when simultaneously targeting the social and physical neighbourhood environment.
Little is known of the patterns of physical activity, standing and sitting by office workers. However, insight into these behaviours is of growing interest, notably in regard to public health ...priorities to reduce non-communicable disease risk factors associated with high levels of sitting time and low levels of physical activity. With the advent and increasing availability of indoor tracking systems it is now becoming possible to build detailed pictures of the usage of indoor spaces. This paper reports initial results of indoor tracking used in conjunction with the ActivPAL activity monitoring device. In this paper we give an overview of the usage of the tracking system and its installation and illustrate some of the resultant data. We also provide preliminary results that investigate the relationship between location, light physical activity and sitting in a small sample of office workers (n=33) from two separate office environments in order to demonstrate the relevance and explanatory power of the technique.
To explore the associations of exposure to carbon dioxide with adults’ response speed, 69 participants were invited to participate in the experiment conducted in an environmentally controlled ...chamber. Participants were exposed alone in three separate sessions, each lasting one hour, with a fixed ventilation rate, temperature and relative humidity level and the CO2 levels fixed at 600ppm, 1500ppm and 2100ppm, respectively. A validated neurobehavioral test battery, the Behavioural Assessment and Research System (BARS) was used to assess participants’ cognitive performance, and response times were collected. Response speed was assessed in ten different tests. After adjusting for potential confounders (age, gender, and education), results showed no significant differences in eight out of the ten neurobehavioral tests. For the Selective Attention test, participants responded faster (lower response time) under CO
2
levels of 2100ppm compared to 600ppm (adj.β-coef. -17.57, 95% CI (-29.45, -5.68), p-value=0.004). For the Progressive Ratio Test, participants’ response times significantly decreased with CO
2
levels increased. Results indicate no statistical link between CO
2
levels and response speed, with only two out of ten comparisons being significant.
Ecological models of physical activity posit that social and physical environmental features exert independent and interactive influences on physical activity, but previous research has focussed on ...independent influences. This systematic review aimed to synthesise the literature investigating how features of neighbourhood physical and social environments are associated with physical activity when both levels of influence are simultaneously considered, and to assess progress in the exploration of interactive effects of social and physical environmental correlates on physical activity.
A systematic literature search was conducted in February 2016. Articles were included if they used an adult (≥15 years) sample, simultaneously considered at least one physical and one social environmental characteristic in a single statistical model, used self-reported or objectively-measured physical activity as a primary outcome, reported findings from quantitative, observational analyses and were published in a peer-reviewed journal. Combined measures including social and physical environment items were excluded as they didn't permit investigation of independent and interactive social and physical effects. Forty-six studies were identified.
An inconsistent evidence base for independent environmental correlates of physical activity was revealed, with some support for specific physical and social environment correlates. Most studies found significant associations between physical activity and both physical and social environmental variables. There was preliminary evidence that physical and social environmental variables had interactive effects on activity, although only 4 studies examined interactive effects.
Inconsistent evidence of independent associations between environmental variables and physical activity could be partly due to unmeasured effect modification (e.g. interactive effects) creating unaccounted variance in relationships between the environment and activity. Results supported multiple levels of environmental influence on physical activity. It is recommended that further research uses simultaneous or interaction analyses to gain insight into complex relationships between neighbourhood social and physical environments and physical activity, as there is currently limited research in this area.
Poor air quality is associated with poor health. Little attention is given to the complex array of environmental exposures and air pollutants that affect mental health during the life course.
We ...gather interdisciplinary expertise and knowledge across the air pollution and mental health fields. We seek to propose future research priorities and how to address them.
Through a rapid narrative review, we summarise the key scientific findings, knowledge gaps and methodological challenges.
There is emerging evidence of associations between poor air quality, both indoors and outdoors, and poor mental health more generally, as well as specific mental disorders. Furthermore, pre-existing long-term conditions appear to deteriorate, requiring more healthcare. Evidence of critical periods for exposure among children and adolescents highlights the need for more longitudinal data as the basis of early preventive actions and policies. Particulate matter, including bioaerosols, are implicated, but form part of a complex exposome influenced by geography, deprivation, socioeconomic conditions and biological and individual vulnerabilities. Critical knowledge gaps need to be addressed to design interventions for mitigation and prevention, reflecting ever-changing sources of air pollution. The evidence base can inform and motivate multi-sector and interdisciplinary efforts of researchers, practitioners, policy makers, industry, community groups and campaigners to take informed action.
There are knowledge gaps and a need for more research, for example, around bioaerosols exposure, indoor and outdoor pollution, urban design and impact on mental health over the life course.
Conceptual approaches to wellbeing in buildings: a scoping review Hanc, Madalina; McAndrew, Claire; Ucci, Marcella
Building research and information : the international journal of research, development and demonstration,
08/2019, Volume:
47, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Several industry-led initiatives in various countries demonstrate a new interest in wellbeing and buildings. This paper adopts a scoping review method aiming to establish the most prevalent and ...insightful definitions and dimensions of wellbeing in buildings applied in the recent published literature. The paper adopts a two-step method for identifying and categorizing the conceptual approaches to wellbeing encountered in the current literature. First, an overview is presented of the term 'wellbeing' and its development over time. Second, the broad wellbeing categories identified are further refined and complemented via a deductive approach, drawing the final set of conceptual themes informed by the papers reviewed in this study. Nine themes were identified, two of which deductively emerged from the papers included in this study: environmental satisfaction/comfort and cognitive performance/productivity. The findings emphasize the heterogeneity of conceptual approaches to research concerning 'wellbeing in buildings', an ambiguity between wellbeing outcomes or determinants, and the need for greater clarity on the relative contributions of different wellbeing dimensions to overall individual or population wellbeing. Based on these findings, future work could be carried out to provide guidance on how to evaluate claims of evidence-based building design which foster individual or population wellbeing.
In the past few decades, research on the association between indoor temperature and sleep has primarily used laboratory rather than field data collected in epidemiological cohorts.
Secondary data on ...2493 individuals aged 43 years was obtained from the National Survey of Health and Development (NSHD). Logistic regression models were used to investigate the associations between temperatures (indoor at home, spot measurement when the nurses visited during the day; and outdoor, monthly average) and self-reported sleep disturbances, adjusting for socio-demographics, health variables, housing variables, and temperature-related variables.
Associations were found between daytime indoor temperature with difficulty initiating (OR: 0.95, 95%CI: 0.91–0.98) and maintaining sleep (OR: 0.96, 95%CI: 0.93–0.99). Compared with neutral indoor temperatures (17–28 °C), low indoor temperature (≤17 °C) was associated with difficulty initiating sleep (OR: 1.79, 95%CI: 1.21–2.65). Stratified analysis results across tertiles showed that associations with difficulty initiating (OR: 0.87, 95%CI: 0.77–0.99) and maintaining sleep (OR: 0.88, 95%CI: 0.79–0.98) were observed respectively in the lowest (≤20 °C) and highest tertile (≥23 °C) of indoor temperature. There was no association between outdoor temperature and self-reported sleep disturbances in this study.
In this first UK-based epidemiology study investigating temperature and sleep, self-reported sleep disturbances were associated with residential daytime indoor temperatures. Low indoor temperature had significantly higher odds ratio for difficulty initiating sleep compared with the neutral indoor temperature. A warmer indoor environment might be more suitable for sleep maintenance than sleep initiation. Indoor temperature in this study was a superior indicator of sleep disturbances than outdoor temperature. Although these findings are based on a UK sample, they may be relevant to other high-income settings with similar housing stock and climatic conditions.
•Daytime residential indoor temperature was associated with self-reported sleep disturbances in UK adults in real-life context.•Low indoor temperatures resulted in higher odds of difficulty initiating sleep, compared with neutral indoor temperatures.•Difficulty initiating and maintaining sleep were associated with the lowest and highest tertile of room temperature respectively.•Indoor daytime temperature was a superior indicator of sleep disturbances than monthly outdoor temperature.
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