Shepley's new book hailed
as a 'definitive resource'

Hailed as a definitive resource for evaluating health facilities, a new book by Mardelle McCuskey Shepley, professor of architecture at Texas A&M University, is now available from Asclepion Publishing, LLC.

The book, "Health Facility Evaluation for Design Practitioners," provides information to help design professionals better understand, plan, conduct and share pre- and post-occupancy evaluations of health facilities.

Shepley is holder of the William M. Peña Endowed Professorship in Information Management at Texas A&M University and director of the university’s Center for Health Systems and Design.

"Evidence-based design has taken hold, and practitioners seek to base their decisions about the built environment on credible research to achieve the best possible outcomes," states publisher’s book summary. "However, systematic evaluation of the effects of these decisions has been lacking, leaving questions regarding their impact and undermining the validity of future recommendations."

In Part I, "Evaluation in Context," Shepley defines terms associated with the facility evaluation process, summarizes the approaches of some of the most prolific experts in the field, and sketches the evolution of building evaluation by offering examples and precedents. She then tackles the integration of evaluation research into private practice, citing benefits and exploring impediments. Part I concludes with the business case for facility evaluation.

Part II, Evaluation in Action, deliberately follows the structure of a research paper, showing how research is done. The author, with commentary from many leading health design luminaries, takes readers step by step through the evaluation process, beginning with how to conduct and summarize a literature review, continuing with:

• how to develop an evaluation hypothesis;
• how to develop and describe a methodology;
• how to analyze and summarize results; and
• how to interpret, discuss, and disseminate results.

Part II also includes a chapter on obtaining funding.

Shepley concludes the book by examining trends and the future of practitioner-focused facility evaluation (PFE). The appendices offer hands-on tools in the form of a sample literature review, a template for a PFE survey and a glossary of research terms.

The book is available through the Center for Health Design’s online store at store.healthdesign.org.

- Posted: Nov. 29, 2010 -

Contact:   Phillip Rollfing, prollfing@archone.tamu.edu or 979.458.0442.