Systematic review of resilience measures: construction management graduates’ perspective

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify the most appropriate resilience measures in the literature for construction management (CM) graduates. Evaluation criteria are required to assess established instruments in terms of covering pivotal dimensions of resilience in the targeted population. A systematic review and qualitative synthesis of the literature were adopted to address research objectives. As the first finding, the literature synthesis resulted in a factor structure comprising 42 predictors of resilience organized in two domains; social and personal. It can add value to the CM curriculum by introducing an agenda for the development of resilience-promoting academic initiatives. As the second finding, the present study identified that three established instruments of Youth Ecological-Resilience Scale (YERS), Resilience at University (RAU), and Adolescent Resilience Scale (ARS-30) are more appropriate in the target context due to covering the required aspects of resilience. We also proposed how to further improve these instruments for a more effective application in the target population. We also identified the specific factors which are important in the construction sector but have not been covered in extant instruments. Thus, future research can emphasize neglected areas to refine current instruments or develop a new measure fitting the context. This paper holds substantial implications for rethinking extant resilience measures from a construction graduates’ perspective, as well as for incorporating important resilience skills in construction education.

Keywords:

• Construction industry
• construction management graduates
• higher education
• resilience measures

Acknowledgement

The authors would acknowledge the contributions made by previous researchers in this field. This study is part of a research project which is supported by University of Newcastle, RMIT University (Dr. P. McLaughlin), Deakin University (Professor A. Mills), and particularly the Office of Learning and Teaching in Australia who funded the original project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Office of Learning and Teaching in Australia [grant number SD15-5074].