Application of Rasch Measurement Model in Establishing Roles Hierarchy for Malaysian Building Surveying Graduates

Abstract

Despite the rising demand for the building surveying services in the current market, the function of this profession is generally still misunderstood. Hence, this paper attempts to identify the hierarchy and potential roles that can be offered by building surveying graduates in order to provide the acceptable roles in the Malaysian construction industry. A quantitative research approach has been adopted to achieve this study’s objective with close-ended questionnaires have been developed and administered to 136 professional building surveyors who are registered with the Building Surveying Division, Royal Institution of Surveyor Malaysia. The retrieved data were analysed using the IBM SPSS Statistic for the respondents’ demographic data and the Rasch measurement model that applied the Winsteps version 3.70 software in order to analyse the data on reliability, item fit, and item measure for roles hierarchy. The result of the study shows that the roles hierarchy consisted of 29 essential tasks a graduate should deal with in order to thrive in the labour market after graduation. Correspondingly, building maintenance and conservation, building control administration, building inspection, risk management and building audit, building works and quality, and building insurance are the essential roles there are based on the hierarchy level that has been extracted by the six components. This study contributes to the body of knowledge in the Malaysia context, in particular for the general international building surveying community as it reveals a roles hierarchy that graduates are required to perform, and where it will provide awareness on the existence of the building surveying vocation among other the non-allied construction professionals in Malaysia.