Sacrificial Pseudoreplication in LEED Cross-Certification Strategy Assessment: Sampling Structures

Abstract

Abstract:The study aims to suggest sampling structures to avoid sacrificial pseudoreplication in the evaluation of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified projects. The sampling includes two structures that exclude sacrificial pseudoreplication and one structure that leads to sacrificial pseudoreplication: (i) The state is the sampling frame in which LEED projects are treated as primary sampling units; (ii) The US is the sampling frame, the state is the primary sampling unit in which LEED projects are treated as evaluation units; and (iii) The US is the sampling frame in which LEED projects are pooled from different states and treated as primary sampling units. The three sampling structures are applied to the evaluation of the Silver-to-Gold cross-certification performances of LEEDv3 for new construction and LEEDv3 for existing buildings. The same cross-certification strategy was revealed if either structure (i) or structure (ii) was applied, while it was poorly estimated and misinterpreted if structure (iii) was applied, i.e., sacrificial pseudoreplication had occurred.

The Effect of Regional Priority Points on the Performance of LEED 2009 Certified Buildings in Turkey, Spain, and Italy

“…This design structure can be defined as a single-unit design structure, in which the Mediterranean basin was defined at only one scale [30]. Recently, when LEED 2009 Silver-Gold transition was evaluated, a single-unit design was applied, either the entire United States or individual U.S. state [25]. It was clearly shown that corrected statistical conclusion occurred when the single-input design structure was applied to an individual U.S. state.…”

“…Based on the study [25], in the evaluation of LEED Gold-certified projects, the Mediterranean basin was defined as "a sampling frame" (i.e., the sampling frame is a collection of primary sampling units "accessible for sampling in the population of interest" [53]). While the LEED Gold-certified projects within each country (Turkey, Spain, and Italy) were defined as "primary sampling units" (i.e., the primary sampling unit is statistically independent of other primary sampling units within the same sampling frame [53]).…”

“…[34]. Recently, Pushkar [25] showed that if LEED certified projects were divided into several groups (U.S. states) with small sample sizes, then the statistical conclusions were more realistic than when all LEED projects were pooled into one group. Table 3.…”

A Comprehensive Analysis: Sustainable Trends and Awarded LEED 2009 Credits in Vietnam

“…In the third step, the normal distribution test is implemented because the number of samples of LEED silver, gold LEED, and LEED platinum projects is limited. Furthermore, the results of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test showed that data is not a normal distribution, and LEED data are presented in ordinal scales [17]. To investigate the significant differences between the two groups with different LEED certificate levels of certification and consider the problem of pseudoreplication, the statistical tests used are based on suggestions of S. Pushkar's (2018) study [25].…”

“…Nguyen developed an application by interacting web map service (WMS) technology and BIM to pre-calculate LEED awarded points of the "Location and transportation" category [16]. The research of S. Pushkar (2018) pointed out that several data analysis studies of previous LEED-certified projects have to consider the problem of pseudoreplication [17]. Recently, when Wu et al (2017) [6] and Wu et al (2018) [18] analyzed previous LEED certification project data, they used aggregated processes to achieve extremely low P-values.…”