How does education from a high-status university affect professional property appraisers' valuation judgments?

Abstract

The repertory grid technique is used to investigate professional property appraisers' thought patterns, and these patterns' complexity, with respect to the universities from which the appraisers graduated. Nearly half of Sweden's 138 authorized property appraisers participated in the study. The results indicate that the appraisers graduating from the university with the longest tradition of property education and ranked highest among the universities offering such education in Sweden have less complex thought patterns than do those graduating from other Swedish universities. This indicates that appraisers graduating from the highest ranked university simplify their valuation judgments more than do other appraisers.