The development of a reliable, valid, and simple office lighting survey

Occupant surveys remain the most accurate and cost effective way to assess the lighting-of office spaces. Presently, there are only two lighting surveys that have been developed with extensive normative data: Vischer's (1989) Lighting Comfort Scale (LCS) and Gillette and Brown's (1986) Occupant Questionnaire (OQ). The LCS is the lighting portion of Vischer's Building-in-use Assessment, a questionnaire developed for the assessment of overall office quality. The LCS has limited diagnostic ability and is difficult to score. The OQ was developed as an attempt to quantify ''good office lighting.'' The OQ has somewhat more diagnostic use than the LCS, but is even more labor intensive to score. The Office Lighting Survey (OLS) has been designed to be simple and rapid to administer and score, and to provide considerable diagnostic information when problems are found. The OLS has normative data derived from responses from over 1250 office occupants in 13 different buildings. Using these data, results from the OLS have been shown to be reliable and valid, and to agree closely wit the LCS and OQ.