Civil Engineering and Architecture Vol. 4(6), pp. 213 - 220
DOI: 10.13189/cea.2016.040602
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Testing the Reliability of Sketch Maps for Multi-sited Design Studies

Hope Hui Rising ^*
School of Design and Construction, Washington State University, USA

ABSTRACT

Most design research studies using sketch maps as a data source [2, 7, 17] have not produced generalizable design principles possibly due to the lack of a reliable multi-sited evaluative framework. The author proposed a sketch map assessment rubric based on the speculated development of spatial knowledge from declarative, procedural, hierarchical, topological, configurational, to projective [12, 17, 22]. The rubric postulated these 6 stages as parallels of landmark, path, edge, district, pattern, and diagram. A pattern here denotes a gestalt-like network comprising landmarks, paths, edges, and districts in Lynch's [17] terms. A diagram refers to an abstraction of a pattern. Two raters scored 55 sketch maps sampled by the author from 8 cities to test the rubric's inter-rater reliability. To generate rubric-based coherence indicators, the author recoded their ratings according to 3 scoring schemes: Scheme A hypothesized that all stages were distinctly different; scheme B posited no distinction among topological, configurational, and projective types when participants' graphic representational capacities were not significantly different; scheme C postulated that all types beyond declarative and procedural components belonged to the overarching category of survey knowledge characterized by relations of spatial components. To validate these indicators as identifiability measures, the investigator used internal consistency reliability tests to triangulate them with other measures produced by 2 other raters based on the identifiability of 55 sketch maps. The results suggested that topological, configurational, and projective knowledge types were not significantly different. Graphic production skill differences could thus be ignored in this sample. This study demonstrated the feasibility of using behavioral geography and design theories to generate reliable and valid coherence indicators from sketch maps as a reliable data source. This approach could potentially enable researchers to quantify the coherence of sketch maps for multi-sited design studies.

KEYWORDS
Sketch Map Coherence, Assessment Rubric, Multi-sited Design Research, Spatial Knowledge, Imageability, Identifiability, Reliability

Cite This Paper in IEEE or APA Citation Styles
(a). IEEE Format:
[1] Hope Hui Rising , "Testing the Reliability of Sketch Maps for Multi-sited Design Studies," Civil Engineering and Architecture, Vol. 4, No. 6, pp. 213 - 220, 2016. DOI: 10.13189/cea.2016.040602.

(b). APA Format:
Hope Hui Rising (2016). Testing the Reliability of Sketch Maps for Multi-sited Design Studies. Civil Engineering and Architecture, 4(6), 213 - 220. DOI: 10.13189/cea.2016.040602.