Economic Development Resiliency: Mobilized Disaster’s Readiness Among Higher Learning Students in Malaysia

Abstract

Resilient economic development is supported by each and every people as a whole. To deal with disasters, we should not act alone. Readiness is one part of the process of disaster management and natural disasters that disrupt the living system. The study was conducted to measure the level of readiness for emergencies and disasters among youth (eg: high learning students) and to develop items for factors that influence students' ability to serve in disaster areas. To achieve the following objectives, two analyses were conducted: the first analysis was the comparison of mean scores and the second analysis was the factor analysis involving four factors, physical factors, university management factors, financial factors and personal factors. This study uses questionnaire and online form to collect data from respondents. A total of 120 respondents from three higher learning in Malaysia – Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (UPSI), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) and University of Technology (UiTM) were involved in this study. The level of readiness has a high mean value and indicates a good level of readiness among the respondents. Factor analysis showed that there were no significant differences between the techniques of determining the number of factors or not for all the items that were formed. Nevertheless, the Cronbach Alpha values indicate that the items are constructed and that the overall research tool has internal consistency values. This study is expected to increase the engagement and spirit of volunteerism as it can add value to the students and even produce a high quality national leadership.