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.
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.
How can school and university buildings adapt to accommodate growth and significant change in educational technologies? How can new buildings be designed that will stand the test of future change? ...Architect and planner
Alexi Marmot
, Professor of Facility and Environment Management at the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London, looks at innovative upgrades of old educational buildings and conversions of other facilities into contemporary schools, colleges and universities. She identifies general principles and useful tools that can help educators, architects and designers working in the field.
There is a lack of understanding about displaced children's experiences of places and play in the field of children's geographies and built environment. This paper contributes to emerging knowledge ...in the fields of displacement, place and play by summarising and identifying gaps in the existing evidence regarding displaced children's experiences of place in temporary and/or informal settlements, or in new environments. The scoping review deployed a combination of search terms related to displacement (displaced, informal settlement, temporary settlement, refugee) and themes related to place and play (child friendly places/spaces, experience of place, place attachment). A total of 1001 studies were identified from ScienceDirect and Proquest, with 33 studies included in the review. From the limited number of relevant studies, it was found that place attachment provides a sense of stability amidst change, contributes to wellbeing and identity, and supports the cognitive, physical and social development of displaced children. Overall, play and opportunities for play can help children to adapt to a new place following displacement. The review concludes that more research is needed to explore displaced children's experience of place in both their original and new environment, as well as comparing the experiences of place for 'placed' and 'displaced' children.
Various countries have introduced minimum cooling set-points for air-conditioning either through voluntary or mandatory policies. In the UK, recent recommendations advocate higher summer thermostat ...settings in offices than formerly, with an indication that 24±2°C may deliver thermally comfortable environments. However, limited published information exists on the actual summer temperatures maintained in UK air-conditioned offices and on facility managers’ perspectives on imposing limits upon summer set-point (SSP). To address this knowledge gap, an online survey was distributed to facility managers responsible for temperature regulation in UK air-conditioned offices. Over 60% of the respondents report a SSP≤22°C, indicating potential to raise SSPs. Responses indicate that a recommendation is preferred to a mandatory approach in limiting SSPs, although a mandatory policy is acknowledged as a potentially more effective driver of change. Whilst a mandatory policy on SSP limits may not be welcomed by FMs and would be difficult to enforce, public sector organisations could lead the way in introducing minimum SSPs, as they generally implement higher SSPs than private organisations, are more supportive of such a policy and would accept higher SSPs. Further intervention studies are required to assess the impact on occupants’ expectations and productivity, along with senior management’s perceptions.
•Most UK AC offices are likely to have an air conditioning summer set-point ≤22°C, hence there is scope to raise summer set-points.•Offices with summer set-point ≥24°C are mostly occupied by public organisations.•Public organisations are more supportive of the government mandating minimum summer set-points than private organisations.•The public sector could lead the way in introducing minimum summer set-points, as they generally implement higher SSPs than private organisations.
► Studied the effect of raising cooling set-points in air-conditioned offices to 24°C. ► Findings from survey suggest that occupants were feeling warmer at this set-point. ► Results suggest that ...overall they were feeling comfortable at the higher temperature. ► Relationship between environmental attitudes and tolerance of building apparent. ► This could affect the acceptance of higher office temperatures by occupants.
Following the Japanese Cool Biz campaign which advocated relaxed dress codes and cooling set-points of 28°C in air-conditioned public buildings, other countries have introduced similar policies, with temperature limits varying in different countries. In the UK the British Council for Offices suggested that the summer cooling set-points of UK air-conditioned offices should be increased by 2°C from the previously recommended 22±2°C. However, these recommendations are largely supported by desk-based analysis rather than using field studies. This paper presents the findings of a blind, controlled intervention study conducted in the summer of 2010 in an office building in London to investigate the effects of increasing the current cooling set-point to 24°C. The temperature of one floor was changed and compared with a ‘control’ floor where the set-point remained unchanged. The indoor air temperatures were measured at various locations across the floors to monitor the temperatures the occupants were experiencing. The BUS post-occupancy evaluation survey was used to assess occupants’ self-reported comfort and satisfaction, whilst the NEP questionnaire was used to estimate occupants’ environmental attitudes. The findings from statistical analyses of the data collected for all 129 participants suggest that increasing the set-point temperature led to the occupants feeling significantly warmer in comparison with the group at lower temperature settings. Nevertheless, this did not affect the self-reported thermal comfort of the occupants in the intervention group, as depicted by an insignificant difference between the two groups. It was also observed that there is a positive correlation between the occupants’ tolerance of higher indoor air temperatures and their environmental attitudes, indicating that this could play a key role in the acceptance of indoor temperature changes in the UK.
Office-based workers spend a large proportion of the day sitting and tend to have low overall activity levels. Despite some evidence that features of the external physical environment are associated ...with physical activity, little is known about the influence of the spatial layout of the internal environment on movement, and the majority of data use self-report. This study investigated associations between objectively-measured sitting time and activity levels and the spatial layout of office floors in a sample of UK office-based workers. Participants wore activPAL accelerometers for at least three consecutive workdays. Primary outcomes were steps and proportion of sitting time per working hour. Primary exposures were office spatial layout, which was objectively-measured by deriving key spatial variables: 'distance from each workstation to key office destinations', 'distance from participant's workstation to all other workstations', 'visibility of co-workers', and workstation 'closeness'. 131 participants from 10 organisations were included. Fifty-four per cent were female, 81% were white, and the majority had a managerial or professional role (72%) in their organisation. The average proportion of the working hour spent sitting was 0.7 (SD 0.15); participants took on average 444 (SD 210) steps per working hour. Models adjusted for confounders revealed significant negative associations between step count and distance from each workstation to all other office destinations (e.g., B = -4.66, 95% CI: -8.12, -1.12,
< 0.01) and nearest office destinations (e.g., B = -6.45, 95% CI: -11.88, -0.41,
< 0.05) and visibility of workstations when standing (B = -2.35, 95% CI: -3.53, -1.18,
< 0.001). The magnitude of these associations was small. There were no associations between spatial variables and sitting time per work hour. Contrary to our hypothesis, the further participants were from office destinations the less they walked, suggesting that changing the relative distance between workstations and other destinations on the same floor may not be the most fruitful target for promoting walking and reducing sitting in the workplace. However, reported effect sizes were very small and based on cross-sectional analyses. The approaches developed in this study could be applied to other office buildings to establish whether a specific office typology may yield more promising results.
Habitual behaviours are learned responses that are triggered automatically by associated environmental cues. The unvarying nature of most workplace settings makes workplace physical activity a prime ...candidate for a habitual behaviour, yet the role of habit strength in occupational physical activity has not been investigated. Aims of the present study were to: (i) document occupational physical activity habit strength; and (ii) investigate associations between occupational activity habit strength and occupational physical activity levels. A sample of UK office-based workers (
= 116; 53% female, median age 40 years, SD 10.52) was fitted with activPAL accelerometers worn for 24 h on five consecutive days, providing an objective measure of occupational step counts, stepping time, sitting time, standing time and sit-to-stand transitions. A self-report index measured the automaticity of two occupational physical activities ("being active" (e.g., walking to printers and coffee machines) and "stair climbing"). Adjusted linear regression models investigated the association between occupational activity habit strength and objectively-measured occupational step counts, stepping time, sitting time, standing time and sit-to-stand transitions. Eighty-one per cent of the sample reported habits for "being active", and 62% reported habits for "stair climbing". In adjusted models, reported habit strength for "being active" were positively associated with average occupational sit-to-stand transitions per hour (B = 0.340, 95% CI: 0.053 to 0.627,
= 0.021). "Stair climbing" habit strength was unexpectedly negatively associated with average hourly stepping time (B = −0.01, 95% CI: −0.01 to −0.00,
= 0.006) and average hourly occupational step count (B = −38.34, 95% CI: −72.81 to −3.88,
= 0.030), which may reflect that people with stronger stair-climbing habits compensate by walking fewer steps overall. Results suggest that stair-climbing and office-based occupational activity can be habitual. Interventions might fruitfully promote habitual workplace activity, although, in light of potential compensation effects, such interventions should perhaps focus on promoting moderate-intensity activity.
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