This study believes that one of the most ignored areas in studies
pertaining to issues involving college and university students is their preferences
toward their accommodation. The lack of scholarly works in this area of study
might be due to paucity of theoretical foundation, relevant research instruments,
as well as the unidentifi ed underlying factors. The current study is an attempt to
fi ll some part of this vacuum. It developed and examined the reliability and validity
of the student accommodation preferences instrument (SAPI). The focus of the
study was on campus accommodation at Universiti Sains Malaysia, and the SAPI
was conceptualized on the basis of residence hall and home similarities in relation
to eight main factors, namely visual, facility, amenity, location, personalization
and fl exibility in the room, social contact, security and privacy. To assess the
construct validity of the instrument, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted
using principal components analysis with varimax rotation, by which six factors
were extracted. The privacy factor was deleted because of high cross-loading with
other factors, whereas the facility and amenity factors were combined. In addition,
the combination of personalization and fl exibility with some other items formed
a new factor, which was labeled convenience of student room. Consequently
the SAPI was formed with the following factors: facility and amenity, visual,
convenience of student ’ s room, location, social contact and security. The total
variance explained was 46.55 per cent of the total variance, whereas the internal
correlation consistency of measures that was assessed using Cronbach ’ s  yielded
a high reliability coeffi cient for factors from 0.73 to 0.92.

• Development and validation of the student accommodation preferences instrument (SAPI) *