Design Factors Influencing Students’ Emotional Well-being in University Hostels: A Pilot of Repertory Grid Technique

The Second International Conference on: Environmental Design,   

Material Science, and Engineering Technologies (EDMSET), Apr. 2025, UAE

Exploring emotional well-being (EWB) has become increasingly important in assessing the impact of built environments on individuals, particularly following COVID-19 studies on university students' mental health. EWB examines how emotions shape overall well-being within specific environments. Interactive approaches that capture individuals' contextual experiences in the built environment are recommended for such investigations. To explore how university hostel designs influence students’ EWB, this study applied Personal Construct Theory (PCT) alongside the Repertory Grid Technique (RGT). As a structured interview method, RGT helps reveal how individuals perceive their experiences. Initially, qualitative RGT interviews were conducted with fifteen female students from United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) hostels, gathering insights about three experienced environments and an ideal imagined space. This stage identified key emotional constructs linked to design factors. Building on these insights, we established a set of predefined bipolar constructs. To further examine these constructs, a pilot study was conducted through ten online interviews with students residing in the female hostel at Ajman University. Using the quantitative form of RGT, students compared their own rooms in the hostel, at home, and in an ideal place based on the predefined bipolar constructs. Preliminary findings highlight RGT’s potential as a valuable data collection tool in architectural research and underscore the importance of emotional constructs in hostel design. This study demonstrates RGT’s applicability in full-scale research and provides valuable insights for designing university hostels that prioritize students' EWB.