The PLSCI is designed to help researchers document the contents of Personal Living Spaces (e.g. rooms in dorms or residential centers). The instrument has several hundred items on it but you should feel free to use just portions of it if that’s what suits your research questions. The PLSCI includes broad ratings (e.g., clean vs. dirty; drafty vs. stuffy; gloomy vs. cheerful) and codings of specific items (e.g., scissors, sports related decor, ash tray).
Gosling, S. D., Craik, K. H., Martin, N. R., & Pryor, M. R. (2005). The Personal Living Space Cue Inventory: An analysis and evaluation. Environment and Behavior, 37, 683-705.
We introduce the Personal Living Space Cue Inventory (PLSCI), designed to document comprehensively features of Personal Living Spaces (PLS); common examples of PLSs include rooms in family households, dormitories, or residential centers. We describe the PLSCI’s development, and provide evidence for its reliability and sensitivity. Next, we employ case-study comparisons to illustrate and evaluate the perspectives provided by global descriptors and specific content codings. We conclude that global ratings and specific codings provide complementary yet distinct characterizations of PLSs.
1. PLSCI manuscript [in pdf format]
2. Norms based on assessments of 83 Personal Living Spaces are available in: Gosling, S. D., Craik, K. H., Martin, N. R., & Pryor, M. R. (2005). Material attributes of Personal Living Spaces. Home Cultures, 2, 51-88 [available in pdf]. This paper presents a broad conceptual framework for exploring the meanings conveyed by the attributes and item contents of Personal Living Spaces, focusing on three personal characteristics of residents: gender, ethnicity, and personality.