Philosophical Foundations and Metatheoretical Considerations for Creating Frameworks to Collect Facility Programming Information

Abstract

This study attempts to provide theoretical guidance to scholars who collect facility programming data. To facilitate the organization of their efforts and to enable them to become more efficient data collectors, we begin by developing philosophical and metatheoretical foundations that help create concrete theoretical levels and the related models, research designs, and protocols required for efficient data collection. Activity Theory and systems thinking permit the elaboration of the concept of activity within a dynamic and hierarchical organization. Specifically, sociospatial reality is viewed as a continuum starting with building users moving toward their goals, followed by activities for achieving these goals, identifying user needs that emerge in the process of these activities, and concluding with built environment structures that provide for and satisfy these needs. Because facility programming situations and projects are very different, we offer general guidelines intended to assist programmers develop both project specific frameworks and research designs.Together these methodological foundations ground our framework in the reality of sociospatial relationships and provide guidelines for collecting relevant and usable information for supporting decision making during the facility programming design process.

A Framework for Data Collection in Facility Programming: The Subject-Object Approach

“…The idea of a multipurpose framework does not imply that a preconceived "cookie-cutter" must be imposed on every situation studied (Popov & Goza, 2018). Rather, we suggest that what is needed is an abstract and inclusive conceptual structure, one flexible enough to be further elaborated when applied to specific building types and programming situations.…”

“…This is the second part of our project focusing on the development of a framework designed to guide the process of information collection in facility programming. Our initial study Philosophical Foundations and Metatheoretical Considerations for Creating Frameworks to Collect Facility Programming Information (Popov & Goza, 2018) presented the philosophical foundations for the creation of this framework. The framework we here is conceived as a wide-ranging and flexible guide for the development of project-specific research instruments.…”

“…The framework we here is conceived as a wide-ranging and flexible guide for the development of project-specific research instruments. We interpret framework to mean a way to organize information about a social phenomenon and as a way to systematically present a class or type of phenomena for the purpose of guiding research on the specific phenomenon examined (Jabareen, 2009;Popov & Goza, 2018). Consequently, this framework will be presented as a theoretical arrangement for organizing relevant components and interrelationships.…”

“…As mentioned before in Popov and Goza (2018), facility programming is about examining building users and stakeholders for the purpose of developing design requirements and for generating the information required in order to make design decisions (Cherry, 1999;Duerk, 1993;Hershberger, 2015;Lang & Moleski, 2010;Preiser, 1993). Such programming involves a significant amount of inquiry which must be conducted with sound research methods (Popov & Goza, 2018).…”

“…Such programming involves a significant amount of inquiry which must be conducted with sound research methods (Popov & Goza, 2018). Although there are different paradigmatic views about the role and the process of preparing research designs, it is our belief that research requires thorough planning and that a well-designed examination should guide both data collection and analysis (Popov & Goza, 2018).…”