Methods
This study sought to investigate occupant satisfaction within LEED-certified higher
education buildings at a southeastern public university in the USA. In order to
establish controlled settings across all sample sites, buildings were carefully selected
based on their ability to meet a series of criteria. At a minimum, each building had to be
occupied and certified for at least three years prior to the commencement of the study.
Additionally, each building had to have achieved 50 percent of the credits within the
LEED system’s IEQ category. These two standards helped to ensure that occupants
were familiar with the attributes of their indoor environments and verified that the
initial design intent for selected buildings was to provide an enhanced indoor
experience. Based on these criteria two buildings, referred to herein as Building A and
Building B, were selected from the initial list of eight certified buildings. At the time of
this study, Building A and Building B represented one-third of the LEED gold-certified
projects on the university’s campus. Table I has been provided to illustrate the LEED
prerequisites and credits achieved by Building A and Building B.