Do Students with Different Genders Have a Different Perception of Temperature, Thermal Comfort, Learning and Clothing?

Abstract

Workers of different genders have different demand for thermal comfort. If the thermal environment of the classroom is unsatisfactory, it may harm learning performance. Therefore, it is worth further exploring whether there is a perception difference between students of different genders in thermal comfort. Although differences in thermal comfort between different genders, ages and clothes have been found by many types of research recently, there are few experiments to research the influence of gender differences on thermal comfort among students in educational architecture.

This paper aims to research whether there are differences in the perception of thermal comfort, clothing and temperature among students of different genders of UCL in the lecture theatre. The research objective is to obtain relevant data based on the combination of objective and subjective investigation, analyze the data with T-test and Correlation, and compare the data to research the differences and the reasons behind them.

There is no gender difference in thermal comfort among students in the individual lecture theatre study, but there is a significant gender difference in the all lecture theatre study. In LT05b, no correlation was found between the clothing of different genders and thermal comfort, but a strong linear negative correlation was found between thermal preference and thermal comfort variables of the male group. There is no correlation between the clothing and thermal comfort of students in all the lecture theatre, while there is a strong negative correlation between thermal preference and thermal comfort.

Finally, the conclusion of this study provides some data support for UCL to improve lecture theatre conditions (thermal environment). When the thermal environment of the lecture theatre satisfies the thermal comfort and effective learning needs of students, female students should be fully considered.