Abstract The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 virus forced office workers to conduct their daily work activities from home over an extended period. Given this unique situation, an opportunity emerged to study the satisfaction of office workers with indoor environmental quality (IEQ) factors of their houses where work activities took place and associate these factors with mental and physical health. We designed and administered a questionnaire that was open for 45 days during the COVID-19 pandemic and received valid data from 988 respondents. The results show that low satisfaction with natural lighting, glare, and humidity predicted eye-related symptoms, while low satisfaction with noise was a strong predictor of fatigue or tiredness, headaches or migraines, anxiety, and depression or sadness. Nose- and throat-related symptoms and skin-related symptoms were only uniquely predicted by low satisfaction with humidity. Low satisfaction with glare uniquely predicted an increase in musculoskeletal discomfort. Symptoms related to mental stress, rumination, or worry were predicted by low satisfaction with air quality and noise. Finally, low satisfaction with noise and indoor temperature predicted the prevalence of symptoms related to trouble concentrating, maintaining attention, or focus. Workers with higher income were more satisfied with humidity, air quality, and indoor temperature and had better overall mental health. Older individuals had increased satisfaction with natural lighting, humidity, air quality, noise, and indoor temperature. Findings from this study can inform future design practices that focus on hybrid home-work environments by highlighting the impact of IEQ factors on occupant well-being.
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How indoor environment quality affected college students’ mental health and learning performance during COVID-19: a long-term study
During COVID-19 pandemic, people’s lifestyles have been changed dramatically and
an increase of depression among young adults has been observed. Most universities
or colleges offered online courses instead to prevent COVID transmission. Typically,
home environment is not designed for work or learning. Despite that the relationships
between indoor environment quality (IEQ) and people’s physical health and work
performance have been investigated in regular time, very few efforts have been
taken to understand the relationship between IEQ and students’ mental health and
learning performance during COVID-19 when mental health and learning have become
more crucial due to the face-to-face classes suspension, stay-at-home policies. The
research gap exists on how IEQ at home or similar residential buildings is related to
mental health and learning. This work aims to 1) understand how indoor environmental
(such as thermal, air quality, lighting, acoustic) satisfaction is related to college students’
mental health and learning performance, and 2) predict depression with IEQ satisfaction.
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- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10374216
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Healthy Buildings 2021-America Conference
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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The early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States caused unprecedented disruption to engineering students and society-at-large. Residential students suddenly found themselves forced off-campus and into a new regime of online learning. On top of this, students faced pandemic related uncertainty about their health and the health of their loved ones, restrictions on social life, and the privations of a stuttering economy. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic the engineering student population saw large increases in incidences of depression and other psychological conditions. While COVID-19 continues to be a concern, many of the restrictions and precautions associated with the early outbreak have been relaxed. Most engineering programs are back to in person learning, and strict COVID-testing regimes, mask mandates, and limits on large public gatherings have been largely phased out. With academia and society slowly adjusting to this “new normal,” it is important to know whether and to what extent mental health of engineering students has changed over the course of the pandemic. This work explores this question by analyzing longitudinal data collected at four times from 2019-2021. We analyze how the prevalence of different conditions changed with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and whether they have returned to pre-pandemic levels. Among other results, we found statistically significant increases were observed in total depressive disorders between our initial sample (Fall 2019) and a sample taken immediately post-COVID (Spring 2020). While measured rates of depression decreased between Spring 2020 and Fall 2021, it was not statistically significant, potentially indicating that the student population is still recovering on this metric. Conversely our data shows a statistically significant drop in moderate-to-major psychological distress between our Fall 2019 pre-pandemic sampling and our Fall 2021 post-pandemic sampling indicating, potentially indicating an improvement in overall mental health. Breaking the data down by gender, no significant changes were observed across any measure during the four sample periods for women respondents. Men, however, showed a significant increase in depressive disorders from Fall 2019 to Spring 2020; and a significant decrease in depressive disorders from Spring 2020 to Fall 2021.more » « less
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