Do Gender and Age Group Affect Thermal Sensation? A Field Study in an Office Building

Employees need a comfortable indoor environment since they are working for long hours throughout the day. Thermal comfort forms an important part of this indoor environment, which has an imperative role in the employees' productivity, well-being and satisfaction. Therefore, thermal comfort standards are used to maintain indoor environmental conditions that are acceptable to occupants. However, these standards do not consider the effects of occupants' gender and age group, which may affect the perception of occupants, and, thus, might not predict the actual thermal sensation. This study aims at assessing the effects of gender and age groups on thermal sensation by comparing the actual thermal sensations to the predicted thermal sensations which constitutes the bases of the standards. Within this context. a field study was conducted in an office building in France during cooling season. An online questionnaire was distributed via email to obtain actual thermal sensation of participants. Moreover, indoor environmental conditions including indoor air temperature and relative humidity were recorded via sensors to obtain predicted thermal sensations. A total of 100 an actual and thermal sensation values were obtained and statistical analyses were conducted for comparing the differences between means of actual and predicted thermal sensation values with respect to gender and age groups The results show that the differences between means of actual and predicted thermal sensation values are statistically significant for male and (35-44)age group.