Residential satisfaction in military family housing

Abstract

Military family housing is a different yet important form of residential property asset in Malaysia. It is common that military family housing were found to be in dissatisfactory conditions by the governmemet financial auditor. Residential satisfaction has been adopted in many research as a tool to assess housing inadequacies and advise housing policy improvements. However, studies in residential satisfaction for military family housing are scarce, in Malaysia there is none. Therefore this research explores the concept residential satisfaction in a military family housing complex known as Desa Setia Wira in Kuala Lumpur. This housing complex had with numerous problems during the construction phase. The focus of the research was to find the variables that affected the resident satisfaction and to understand the problems using the concepts residential satisfaction. Data obtained from 102 residents whom responded to an open ended questionaire survey were analysed using content analysis and coding. Data set of 164 problems were uncovered. Analysis using contextual coding, axial coding and selective coding processes revealed that the problems can be categorised into 19 causes of the problems, 15 categories of the problems and finally the 4 themes. In final, representive diagram of the overall contextual problems were presented. The key implication of this study is that through the identifications of the problems in the residential environment, future improvements efforts will be better guided. This research also opens up the path to future studies in Desa Setia Wira and other military family housing in Malaysia as well as enriching the literatures in the world relating to residential satisfaction in military family housing.