EFFECTS OF VENTILATION RATE ON WORK PERFORMANCE

Abstract

This dissertation presents findings from an office study carried out in a field environmental chamber. The experiment was conducted to find out the mechanism of ventilation rate on work performance (indicated by the typing speed). Selected survey questions and two mental performance tasks (arousal and alphabetical reasoning tasks) were analyzed in an attempt to find out the mechanism. In addition, this study also briefly discusses the effects of health conditions and time on work performance. A total of 59 subjects were involved in the experiment, of which 29 were non-asthmatic and the remaining 30 were asthmatic. They were exposed to two ventilation rates – 6.4 L/s/p and 12.8 L/s/p. The results indicated that the subjects’ typing performance decreased by an average of 2.60% when the ventilation rate was increased from 6.4 L/s/p to 12.8 L/s/p, although they perceived the air to be fresher and were more aroused. This may be explained using the encoding theory and Yerkes-Dodson law, whereby the latter proposed that the subjects were aroused to such an extent that their work performance began to decrease. The results also showed that both healthy and asthmatic subjects seemed to be equally affected by ventilation rate. In addition, it was also found that the work performance of the subjects tend to become worse during the second half of the day.