Design and Testing of a Questionnaire on Employability Skills for Building Surveying Graduates in Malaysia

Abstract

The fast-track evolution in the construction industry has forced the institution to yield a high number of graduates each year, including the building surveying program. Hence, this study was conducted with the aim of guiding building surveyors to excel in the employability skills that were demanded by the employers and industry. Therefore, a set of questionnaire instruments was developed and validated to fulfil this purpose. The questionnaire was structured in four phases: phase 1) questionnaire development, phase 2) face and content validity assessment, phase 3) pilot testing, and phase 4) reliability and construct validity assessment. Three panels were selected for content validation, and five panels for face validation. Next, 33 participants from the building surveying field pilot-tested the questionnaire. Lastly, the reliability and construct validity were assessed for internal consistency of the instrument items and item validity evaluation. In the first round of the evaluation for the face and content validity, none of the 47 items were eliminated as all items had an impact score of more than 1.5, and both Content Validity Indexes (CVIs) and Kappa value displayed an excellent degree of agreement. In addition, three items were added as recommended by the panels. During pilot testing, the construct validity was measured using the Pearson Correlation Coefficient, while reliability was measured using Cronbach’s alpha. The results indicate that all items were suggested to be retained as all items had a Pearson Correlation, r-value, more than 0.349 and excellent internal consistency and reliability. Thus, the questionnaire was valid and reliable in exploring the crucial employability skills required by building surveying graduates in Malaysia.