Name: Jenny Egan 

Master’s Thesis Proposal Meeting
Date: Monday, May 9th, 2022
Time: 2:00 PM
Location: Click Here
 
Advisor:
Ruth Kanfer, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)
 
Thesis Committee Members:  

Ruth Kanfer, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)
Phillip Ackerman, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech) 

Sonit Bafna, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)  

Sonia Alvarez-Robinson, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech) 

Title: Conceptualization and Assessment of the Home Workspace: A Person-Centered Approach 

Abstract: The prevalence of working from home (WFH) as an alternative work arrangement has gradually increased as a result of pivotal technological, societal, and global developments throughout the last three decades (Felstead & Henseke, 2017). WFH is not a novel phenomenon, but relatively little attention has been given to the impact of how the spatial environment of the home workspace affects an individual’s work experience (Stephenson et al., 2020). Given that large segments of the workforce were required to hastily organize a workspace in their homes during COVID-19 (Bana et al., 2020), and that remote work is unlikely to recede to pre-pandemic levels, organizational psychologists should consider the impact of home workspace environments on worker outcomes. The proposed study builds upon architectural perspectives to develop a person-centered, sensory-based measure of the home workspace, and assesses the relationship between this measure and psychological connection to home. I hypothesize that multiple human senses (i.e., visual, auditory, olfactory) contribute to an individual’s perception of the home workspace, and that the measure can be meaningfully related to an individual’s connection to home.