# Engineering the Future: Evaluation of Virtual Reality Across Project Lifecycle Stages
## 4 Results
### Complementary CATPCA Analysis of Background Variables Influencing Perceived Practically of VR  
As presented in Section 4.2, the latent variable **of** perceived practicality of VR was constructed and validated through Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). In Section 4.6, this construct was extracted as a single dimension using Categorical Principal Component Analysis (CATPCA). The CHAID model included a wide range of demographic, experiential, and atttitudinal variables. However, only four variables emerged as statistically significant predictors: likelihood of adopting VR in one's professional role, familiarity with VR, education level, and age. These variables successfully distinguished between participants with higher and lower levels of perceived practicality of VR. Other variables--such as academic degree, organization type, years of engineering experience, activity area, tenure in the organization, organizational size, support for innovation, and current role--were not retained in the final CHAID model. This outcome suggests that these variables did not contribute significantly to predicting perceived practicality of VR across the overall sample. To further explore the potential relevance of the variables not retained in the CHAID model, a complementary CATPCA analysis was conducted. This analysis employed bootstrap resampling with a specific focus on object scores and their 95% confidence intervals. The objective was to assess whether any of these supplementary background variables were significantly associated with the latent dimension of perceived practicality of VR, even if they did not meet the CHAID model's criteria for global significance. The CATPCA bootstrap results revealed that for a subset of participants, the confidence intervals around their object scores did not include zero. This indicates that their perceived practicality of VR was significantly shaped by their individual demographic or experiential profiles. Although these variables may not have emerged as significant across the entire sample, they appear to play an important role in explaining individual differences. These findings underscore the value of combining exploratory methods such as CATPCA with classification models to capture patterns that may not be uniformly distributed across all respondents. The results showed that participants with academic backgrounds in hardware and engineering disciplines tended to report higher levels of perceived practicality of VR. Similarly, non-military participants and those with over 20 years of engineering experience exhibited elevated object scores, suggesting a positive relationship between long-term technical exposure and the perceived practicality of VR. Participants working in hardware or mechanical domains also showed higher practicality scores. Long organizational tenure--particularly more than 20 years--was associated with increased perceived practicality of VR, possibly due to a deeper understanding of internal processes. Organizational size also mattered; individuals in medium and large organizations (21 or more employees) tended to perceive VR as more practical. Supportive organizational cultures that encourage innovation were linked to higher object scores. Participants who first experienced VR in a professional or academic setting also rated the technology as more practical. **Leadership and management roles were associated with higher perceived practicality of VR,** suggesting that those in strategic positions are more likely to recognize the broader potential of the technology. The strongest association was found among individuals whose current work involves direct interaction with VR, reinforcing the influence of hands-on experience on the perceived practicality of VR. In this context, positive object scores reflect a positive relationship with perceived practicality of VR, while negative scores indicate a weaker sense of its usefulness.