Draft 1: Places of Comfort

This topic submitted by Jona Shehu, Kathryn Cheney, Shawn Tenbrink, Taylor Floren ( altamarea@bellsouth.net, cheneykc@muohio.edu, Tembrisn@muohio.edu, florentn@muohio.edu ) on 10/6/04 .

Natural Systems 1 Syllabus---Western Program---Miami University

Places of Comfort
Introduction

Places of comfort are not easily found on campus, so where do students find their solace? This is the question that our group hopes to find the answer to. From a stranger's eye and the tour guide's mouth, the most logical and popular location for relaxation and comfort is the library. Most popular of the libraries would be King Library. Why you say when there are so many different libraries that Miami University has to offer? One of the reasons King Library could be a popular location to study is not because a student can stay focused on their work, but because everyone else they know will be there as well. When a student goes to King Library, they might not have the intentions to study alone but in a group setting and therefore they would meet in a group room.
Another location on Miami University's campus would be the Architecture Library. If a person has an interest in architecture, the most logical place of comfort for them, would be at this location. For some, the location of this building is more convenient because it is the same place where classes are held. It is also a place where information for research for projects and related assignments can be found. As a result, the Architecture Library can therefore be considered to be a second home for the many that step into the threshold of this particular building.
The question of where a person is most comfortable or can feel more relaxed, can either be complex or simple. Our project plans to reveal where people are most at ease during the duration of their time here at Miami University. We want to know if their major correlates to their choice of environment. Before looking into the additional research of this subject, we would assume that certain people would be attracted to places that have not only a special interest to them, but the location would be in conjunction with their major.
What do you plan on accomplishing and why does this interest you?
As we complete our surveys and later compare them to our research, we want to plan on accomplishing the following things:
1) Find out the different areas in which people feel most at ease
2) Why these locations have their appeal
3) Who goes to these locations
4) And if any of these locations have any significance to the person's respective major(s)
This topic of research interested us as a group because the four of us, in fact, do have different areas where we feel most at ease. When were started to discuss why, we contemplated what others may do as well. We also noticed that we all have a different field of interest and thought that would be an aspect as to why our choices were so different.
1.
Guillaume, de Machaut, ca. 1300-1377

Title Confort d'ami. English & French (Old French)

Le confort d'ami = Comfort for a friend / Guillaume de Machaut ; edited and translated by R. Barton Palmer
Imprint New York : Garland, 1992

2.
Urban Systems Research & Engineering

Title The urban homesteading catalogue / prepared by Urban Systems Research and Engineering, Inc. for Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Policy Development and Research
Imprint Washington : Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development & Research : for sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1977

This article is about the overall urban landscape a lot of people live in today. It has relivence to the idea of why people are attracted to a certain area. It descusses why people might be attracted to a urban landscape to live in and work.

3.
Person-environment psychology : new directions and perspectives / edited by W. Bruce Walsh, Kenneth H. Craik, Richard H. Price
Imprint Mahwah, N.J. : L. Erlbaum, 2000
Edition 2nd ed

This Journal discuses the psychology behind why people surround themselves with a certain environment. What is it behind the motives of people to choice to live in an urban area compared to living in a area in the country.

4.
Evolutionary social psychology / edited by Jeffry A.Simpson, Douglas T. Kenrick
Mahwah, N.J. : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997

This Journal article is about the changing over time of peoples out look on the environment how over the years people's views have changed. This relates to the idea behind why some people like certain things, do views stay the same or do they change, if a student switched majors would they still like the same things.

5.
Title Landscape perception / edited by Amita Sinha
Imprint London ; San Diego : Academic Press, c1995

This article is talking about how certain people view the landscape around them. Like what a urban kid thinks of the country and so forth. Would there perception of the landscape determine what areas people would find for a place of comfort.

6.
Author White, Stephen

Title Building in the garden : the architecture of Joseph Allen Stein in India and California / Stephen White
Imprint Delhi ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1993

The Garden is interesting because it is man made through it we can see what people like to build, they like to build there own environment. This article gives us insight into what people like, why they build and do things. This will help us better understand is people build a place of comfort or if it is already there.

7.
Title The Soul of nature : visions of a living earth / edited by Michael Tobias and Georgianne Cowan
Imprint New York : Continuum, c1994

This article is talking about the natural environment and is discussing the way we view it and why we view it that way. For the biology majors we can see why people might be attracted to the natural world instead of the artificial world.

8.
Author Middleton, Victor T. C

Title Sustainable tourism : a marketing perspective / Victor T.C. Middleton with Rebecca Hawkins
Imprint Oxford ; Boston : Butterworth-Heinemann, 1998

This is an interesting article because it is discussing vacations. A vacation usually takes place in a area were people find comfort so this article helps us better understand were people would go for this vacation and thus relaxation.

9.
Author Savory, Allan, 1935-

Title Holistic management : a new framework for decision making / Allan Savory with Jody Butterfield
Imprint Washington, D. C. : Island Press, c1999
Edition 2nd ed

This article is looking at the decision making mentality behind people. This will help us look at why people decide on certain things, why they make certain decisions. Thus relating to why people choice a certain place of comfort.

10.
Title The Adapted mind : evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture / edited by Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby
Imprint New York : Oxford University Press, 1992

This article will help our group look at if culture could play a role in where people find comfort. Does the back ground of the person play a role in were they like to go when looking for comfort.

12.
Author David, Marilee, 1944-

Title The new voice pedagogy / by Marilee David
Imprint Lanham, Md. : Scarecrow Press, c1995

Methods

For our student generated lab we would like to look at places of comfort around Miami's campus and trying to find out if students major's directly relate to their choice of an area of comfort. To be able to do this we will have to make groups of majors that we believe would relate to the area to which they find comfort. The people who are English Majors would like to be in the Library? Would the Biology Majors like the out doors? And finally, would the Business Majors would like to be in a place of business up town or in Shriver?
We then see we have three basic groups of people: one relating to books, another to business, and the last to the out doors. We believe that the people that would be attracted to the business areas would be businesses majors, these people would find comfort in this area because this is where they could be emersed in their future field of work and ther would be other who have the same interest. Then we have the English majors, including History and psychology, which would be attracted to the Libraries because they find that they can relate to the Library because of the plentiful amount of literature for the papers they would have to write. Then there are the Science majors, mostly Botany and Biology, these people would be attracted to out side environments because of there interest in the outside world and trying to understand it.
Now we must find sample groups of these three different major groups and pole them to find what areas around campus they would find most appealing to be in, there area of comfort and relaxation. To do this we need a sizable amount of samples from each of the majors and we also need a good poling device. To do this we expect to get at least 200 people from each major and give them a questioner.
There will be at least two questions on the questioner. The first of the questions will ask, "What is your Major?" The second question will ask, "From the pictures below what environment do you find your self most attracted to, as a place of comfort and relaxation?" Below this question will be three pictures, one a Library, one of an outside environment, and one of up town business area. The person then will place a mark next to the picture to indicate what they feel most comfortable with.
After we complete the poling process it will be time to find out if our hypothesis is correct. To do this we will do a statistical analysis to find out if a person's major does directly relate to their places of comfort. It is our belief that when all is said and done that there will be a direct correlation between the two.

Results

Data sheet

With the use of a survey, we hope to sample random people by asking them to choose which place they'd feel most comfortable spending time in.

Which of these places would you like spending most of your time in? Place a check next to one of the descriptions below.
___ Outside (picture of a park) ___ In the library (picture of library)

___ Uptown or in an urban area(picture of uptown)

Discussion

Now is the time to play the devil's advocate. If it so happens that our hypothesis has nothing to do with our findings, where do we go from there? We should take the information that we have gathered and draw a new conclusion. For our topic, this would mean that the place of comfort would not directly relate to that person's major but something else. Thus we should therefore look into a different direction as to what may influence a person's comfort area. Would they be influenced by where they were reared (rural, urban, etc.)? What where their parents' occupations? How old were they? How dedicated were they to their school work? Do they even enjoy or want the major they are studying?

Our Day

The day we present our findings to the class, we want to make our class interactive. We feel the class needs to be interactive because without discussion, the class will be dull and the information presented will not sink in. So to begin, we want the class to come up with a hypothesis on whether or not there is a direct correlation between someone's major and their places of comfort. Secondly, we want the class to fill out the same questionnaire that others have already answered in the Miami University community. That way, when we are further into the class, the students will have a better understanding of the type of questions we have asked others. After they have completed the questionnaire, we will take a few minuets for the class to break up into small groups of three to four so they can converse over their answers. About ten minuets later, we will reconvene to have different groups share with the rest of the class what their group had come up with. We will then commence to share with the class why we chose to design the questionnaire the way we did, why we chose this topic, and finally our findings.

Time Table

In order to start our research on where people are most comfortable on campus, the first thing that we had to do was create a survey that would enable us to compare people's major to the places they are most drawn to.
In order to create a survey, the next thing that we did was find out the most common places people go to study. The three that we decided on were the Library, Uptown, or places in nature. We have divided up certain tasks among the group and gave the task of creating this survey to Jona. We decided that Jona should take pictures with her own personal camera so that we would have the most up-to-date information contained on our survey.
On this survey we are going to include a space where people can write down their major. Even though this part of the data seems so small it is one of the most vital parts because this is what we are going to base our conclusions on. Since our hypothesis is that we think where people feel more comfortable is related to their major, this small amount of information can make the biggest difference in our research.
We also decided to include both the inside and outside views of the library, and certain places uptown. We all agreed that this is important because some people may interpret the outside view as meaning you like to be outside. This tiny error could affect the way that someone would answer.
After creating the survey we are going to hand them out to random people. After finding enough people to complete the survey we are going to compile the information gathered and apply it to the outcome of our study. Even though there is not too much data or information to be collected our study will be widely spread out and contain various majors.

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