# Engineering the Future: Evaluation of Virtual Reality Across Project Lifecycle Stages
## 4 Results
### Predicting Perceived Practicality of VR Using a CHAID Classification Tree Model  
As presented in Section 4.2, the latent variable perceived practicality of VR was constructed and validated through CFA. In the current section, it was also extracted as a single dimension using CATPCA. This analysis was based on seven ordinal variables, each corresponding to a different stage in the project lifecycle: Proposal and Investor Recruitment, Concept Formation, Design and Surveys, Development, Testing, Training, and Maintenance. Each item measured the extent to which respondents perceived VR to be practical or useful at that specific stage (ranging from \"Very little\" = 1 to \"Very much\" = 5). The CATPCA results supported the unification of these indicators into one coherent latent construct, providing the foundation for further validation through CFA. As part of the CATPCA procedure, several alternative factorial structures--including two-factor, three-factor, and four-factor models--were also examined. However, these models demonstrated poor fit indices, further confirming that the unifactorial model most accurately represents the underlying structure of the data and is therefore adopted in the present study. The results of the CATPCA further confirmed the validity of the latent construct perceived practicality of VR as a single dimension. A one-dimensional solution was specified using spline ordinal transformations for each of the seven project lifecycle stages, and the iterative process converged after 15 steps, meeting the convergence criteria. The final solution yielded an eigenvalue of 3.28, accounting for 46.79 percent of the total variance. The internal consistency of the dimension was high, with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.81. To assess the stability of this solution, a balanced bootstrap procedure with 1000 samples was conducted. The bootstrap results were consistent with the initial analysis. The average eigenvalue was 3.47, with a 95% confidence interval ranging from 2.84 to 4.15, explaining, on average, 49.58% of the variance. The bootstrap estimate of Cronbach's alpha was also high at 0.83, with a 95% confidence interval between 0.76 and 0.89, reinforcing the internal reliability of the construct. The component loadings for each stage were strong, ranging from 0.51 to 0.78. Specifically, the Testing stage showed the highest contribution with a loading of 0.78, followed by Design and Surveys at 0.78, Maintenance at 0.75, Development at 0.69, and Training at 0.66. Concept Formation loaded at 0.57, and Proposal and Investor Recruitment at 0.51. All variables exceeded the conventional threshold of 0.50, indicating meaningful contributions to the latent factor. The bootstrapped confidence intervals for these loadings demonstrated consistency and statistical robustness, with most lower bounds above 0.50--for example, 0.59 for Testing, 0.60 for Design and Surveys, and 0.51 for Maintenance. Correlations among the transformed variables indicated moderate to strong associations, particularly among stages such as Testing, Design and Surveys, and Maintenance, suggesting a cohesive grouping of stages where VR is perceived as most practical. In contrast, the Proposal and Investor Recruitment stage, while still above the loading threshold, exhibited weaker correlations with other stages, supporting its relatively lower centrality in the construct. This observation aligns with the subsequent CFA decision to consider model refinement by evaluating the contribution of each stage based on significance and strength of loading. In conclusion, the CATPCA findings validate the unifactorial structure of the latent variable perceived practicality of VR. In addition to the SEM, a CHAID classification tree analysis was conducted to further investigate the predictors of the perceived practicality of VR, using the CATPCA-derived outcome variable.