Perceptions of construction and the human factors climate through mixed methods

To build and maintain a healthy work environment that promotes job satisfaction, the human resources should be at the center of the research. As decreased availability of skilled construction craft works continues to be an issue for the industry, understanding the preferences of current construction workers creates a foundation for continued human-centric research. Evaluating and improving human experiences at work is also important for promoting work performance and long-term worker wellbeing. Presently, individual work dimensions are studied independently and little is known about their interactions overall. To address this gap in existing research, the Human Factors Climate concept was introduced and a metric to measure this climate was created. The Human Factors Climate is defined as the perceived psychological, physiological, and emotional experience at work. This dissertation aims to (1) understand the work preferences of construction workers through social constructionism research methods, (2) define the Human Factors Climate and build a metric to measure this climate applying statistical measures to create a succinct and applicable metric, and (3) analyze job satisfaction in construction through a mixed methods approach combining both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Analysis of the perceptions of work preferences revealed that specific attributes that workers enjoy and other attributes that are disliked generally across trades. While this work is more theoretical, the Human Factors Climate provides a statistically reliable metric to measure the general well-being in the workplace through a tool that was condensed from 75 to 46 questions while maintaining reliability. Combining this tool with a social constructionist open-ended interview provided for a mixed-methods approach that resulted in providing more information to understand the reasoning behind survey findings. Applying work preferences, the Human Factors Climate survey and the interview to specifically studying job satisfaction may allow researchers and practitioners to not only characterize experience at work but to evaluate overall wellbeing and assess the impact of change due to deployment of a new technology or changing means and methods. Such consideration may increase likelihood and enthusiasm of adoption and help with retaining human resources. Further, the findings in this dissertation may aid in partially addressing labor shortages and ensuring worker well-being and job satisfaction.