Relationships between demographic factors and employment prospects of architecture, construction and urban planning graduates

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationships between demographic factors and the employment prospects of architecture, construction and urban planning students. Dimensionality reduction was used to produce the dataset for the further analysis in this paper from the raw data of Australia Graduate Survey (AGS). Descriptive analysis, chi-squared contingency 2-way analysis and phi-coefficient test were used for the analysis of data. The research findings indicated that architecture graduates have the lowest level of graduate employment at 84.66% whilst construction graduates have the highest level at 92.27%. Gender, age and education level are not statistically significant correlated with whether the graduates are able to secure employment after graduation. On the other hand, whether speaking English at home or not is statistically significant correlated with whether graduates secured employment or not after graduation. Demographic factors are statistically significant correlated with whether graduates secure full-time or part-time employment. Architecture graduates who are male, age 24 years or above, studied a postgraduate degree and spoke English at home are more likely to be employed on a full-time basis after graduation. Age and whether speaking English at home or not; and gender are not correlated with whether construction and urban planning graduates respectively were employed full-time.