The agency made an attempt to involve employees as much as possible with the design and execution of the new work environments. The move was highly successful with significant elevations in satisfaction levels. At the same time research also generates information about the phenomenon of interest and may be used to articulate a theory. However, some of the research is fairly atheoretical in nature. The division between basic and applied research is not as strong in environmental psychology as it is in other areas of psychology.
Environmental psychology is data oriented.
Questions about the interaction between people and their environment are resolved by looking at facts. Looking at what is . Contrast with architecture which employs principles of design esthetics. The data which form the basis of facts are from human behavior. An operational definition is one which specifies the steps or operations used to manipulate or measure a variable.