A Brief Look at the Field of EBS
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The field of Environment-Behavior Studies or, as we prefer to call it, Environment, Behaviour & Society (EBS) is a diverse field of studies on the interface between the interdisciplinary social sciences and the built environment professions with a focus on people, society and culture and implications for architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and urban planning.
Very ably led for many years by Associate Professors Ross Thorne and Terrance Purcell, Professor Gary Moore now heads the group. Since the 1960s, research from the discipline has been presented at the most important international conferences in the field, and published in the leading journals (Environment and Behavior, Journal of Environmental Psychology, Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, Environment and Planning B, etc), and in a series of books published by major publishing houses (MIT Press, Van Nostrand Rienhold, Praeger, Plenum, Kluwer, Routledge, Springer, etc.).
EBS is heavily theory driven. The major theories in the field include:
- Person-Based Theories
- Social Group-Based Theories
- Empiricist Theories
- Mediational Theories
- Cultural Theories
- Phenomenological Theories
- Structuralistic Theories
- Organismic Theories
- Interactional Theories
- Transactional Theories
- The predominant theory – the emerging paradigm for the field – is the Interactional-Constructivist Theory.
EBS is inherently empirical and adopts both quantitative and qualitative research designs, methods of data collection and methods of data analysis (see table below). The best research is now often mixed methods, combining and triangulating between both quantitative and qualitative approaches.
| The paradigm of empirical research | Quantitative Approaches | Qualitative Approaches |
|---|---|---|
| Theories | Empiricism Mediational |
Transactionalism Phenomenology |
| Research Design | Quasi-experiments Survey research |
Naturalistic Interpretive |
| Research Methods | Systematic observation Scales |
Ethnographies Participant observation |
| Data Analysis | Inferential statistics Parametric |
In-depth structural |
| Trustworthiness | Reliability Validity Generalisability |
Credibility Dependability Transferability |
| Applications | Policy formulation Design guidance |
Action research |
| Emerging Paradigm |
Interactional-constructivism using |
|
For more information about the theories and methods of EBS research, please see a recent Keynote Paper.
For more information about studying EBS at the University of Sydney, including available scholarships, please see a recent PowerPoint on EBS at Sydney and the faculty's scholarships page.
For further information about applying for EBS research degrees or scholarships, contact Emeritus Professor Gary Moore, Professor of Environment-Behaviour Studies at or any member of the disciplinary group.