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The survey was piloted among six primary principals to ensure that the items were clearly written and interpreted as intended. Feedback from the piloted sample led to some minor modifications in the e-survey design and the modified survey was retested among a sample o f three principals. The sampling in this case was purposeful and was

10 See Appendix 3.

carried out on a target population of newly appointed principals (NAPs). As outlined in chapter one, NAPs are defined in this specific case as those appointed to principalship positions in an 18 month period prior to the survey distribution. This survey group includes principals who had been appointed in schools from September 2011 to January 2013. NAPs are a readily identifiable population and were accessed using the online principals’ network- the 1PPN. The participants are representative of a full national census o f newly appointed principals at a given point in time. The sample then is a subset o f the wider population of primary principals. It is accepted that a small number of principals may not have been members of the IPPN at the time o f the study and as such are outside the target population. The representative population accessed is numbered at 189 for this population category (IPPN, May, 2012). The survey instrument is titled and referenced in this study as the Newly Appointed PrincipctUs Questionnaire (NAPQ).11

Every effort was made to try to ensure a high quality instrument had been designed so as to maximise the response rates for e-survey questionnaires. Following piloting, testing and re-testing, the modified instrument was administered to the full population group o f NAPs, (nl89), accompanied by a cover letter summarising the purposes and intent o f the study. Informed consent was also sought at this time. Attempts were made to engage the interest of the respondents, by highlighting the relevance of the findings for this specific population grouping. Clear instructions were given and adequate time for reflective responses was provided. A response rate o f 60% or higher is considered acceptable in this case (Fogelman & Comber, 2007, Kelley, Clark, Brown & Sitzia, 2003).

11A copy of the Full survey Instrument is included in Appendix 4 85

The survey instrument has been designed specifically for this study, to gather

information relating directly to the fundamental principles of sustainability (Hargreaves and Fink, 2006). It is tailored specifically to a participant population of newly appointed primary school principals. The instrument was constructed using some modified

components abstracted from other instruments: the Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale (Hallinger, 2008) and the Distributed Leadership Questionnaire (DLQ), (Obadara, 2013) as well as items abstracted from the wider literature and items which were devised relating specifically to the Irish educational context at the time of the research design. Content validity for the PIMRS was initially established by Hallinger (2008) and the PIMRS has been proven valid and reliable over the past 25 years and has been used in well over 125 studies reported since the early 1980s (Hallinger, 2008; Leithwood, 2005). A reliability coefficient of 0.72 is reported by Obadara (2013) for the DLQ survey instrument. The modified items selected from both the PIMRS and DLQ were incorporated into the subscales in the survey design where appropriate and each sub-scale was then tested for reliability (See Table 3.5, p. 89). Further category variables highlighted as significant in both the Irish and the international school

leadership literature were devised for inclusion. Each categorised variable is regarded as “some defined property or characteristic o f a person, thing, group or situation that can be measured in some way, so that they can be compared with one another” (Robson, 2008, p. 100).

A structured approach to the selection o f variables was employed by carrying out a documented synthesis of the components, associated with the fundamental principles of

sustainable leadership. These were abstracted from the leadership literature.12 The finalised NAPQ items relate to the three central themes o f succession experiences, moral purpose or leading learning and leadership distribution. The instrument also includes multiple questions designed to examine the same construct so that some measures of internal consistency could be established during analysis. The construct validity or clarity of questions in the survey instrument was assessed through piloting. During piloting issues of validity are a primary consideration. Feedback from the sample pilot group was requested in order to establish whether items corresponded with research questions and were adequately capturing the reality of experience and practice relating to the sustainable leadership components. Improvements to questions, format and scales were made following feedback reports. Minor modifications were made to the instrument at this stage to clarify questions and to refine the format of the

questionnaire. The modified instrument includes an additional open-ended question. To determine construct validity for this qualitative component a further retest of the final survey instrument was carried out prior to distribution. The addition o f a qualitative element in the instrument added to the value o f data by providing an opportunity for respondents to freely report experiences that could not be fully captured in numerical or rated survey items.

In addition to validity and credibility the strength o f a good instrument design may also be evaluated by examining whether it may be appropriately transferred across other relevant settings. This is known as generalizability and “refers to the ability of the researcher (and the user of the research results) to extend the findings of a particular study beyond the specific individuals and setting in which the study occurred” (Mertens,

12 Appendix 5 presents the synthesis of components and construction of variables used the question­ naire

1998, p. 254). The survey instrument distribution was not selective and so is deemed to be representative of the subset population of newly appointed Irish primary principals at the time o f distribution. The instrument is appropriately transferable to similar sample groupings in Irish primary school settings as it explores information pertinent to novice leaders and includes items which are relevant to the Irish educational context. The final dataset comprises a rich body of evidence relating to a full census sample grouping, which supports the transferability of findings to this survey population. From

development of design through theoretical and conceptual framing, to instrument design using a synthesis of the literature, a clear chain of evidence can be traced in this case, to support the validity o f the quantitative research component.