MARCA COSMO: GRUPO GYJ

In the process of developing the questionnaire the researcher depended upon three important variables identified by researchers (see Dillman, 2006) namely opinion, behavior and attributes for collecting data. Additionally, the questionnaire development phase took care of the wording of the questions, the way the variables needed to be categorized, scaled and coded after the responses are received and the general format of the questionnaire. The items used in the questionnaire were based on items already used by other researchers in previous research studies similar to the current one which included those of Cuskelly et al. (2006) for the construct management practice, Galindo- Kuhn and Guzley (2002) for the construct satisfaction, Clary et al. (1998) for the construct motivation and Hoye et al. (2008) for the construct retention. This process provided the support to the researcher in terms of the reliability and validity of the items as the previous researchers had already tested and established the reliability and validity of those items. Furthermore, the items were not used in toto but modified to suit the requirment of the current research. The entire development of the questionnaire took around six months (January 2011 to June 2011) until the pilot survey was conducted in June 2011 and during the process it was essential to ensure that the questionnaire will enable the researcher to achieve the research objectives and answer the research questions. In order to ensure the items were structured and worded guidance of the

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theories and models provided in theoretical framework (Chapter 3) was taken. The whole questionnaire was integrated step by step taking into account the smooth flow required while participants were responding to the questions.

Further to the above, a covering note was attached to the questionnaire so that respondents were introduced to the questionnaire, its purpose and about the objectives of the study. Intrsuction to fill the questionnaire were also provided in the questionnaire. The covering letter, the research instrument and the use of web-portal for collecting responses online were approved by Brunel Ethical Committee prior to the launch of the pilot study. The questions were distributed under five sections (see Appendix 1). The questionnaire given in (Appendix 1) was arrived at after taking into account the pre-test administered on the initial questionnaire which is described in Section 4.10 later.

The first section is the personal information section. This section comprises personal information which provided a general idea about the participants in the survey. Nominal and interval questions were included in this section and questions were about gender, age, qualification, occupation, yearly income and volunteer service (in terms of number of years). Particularly this section provided information on whether the participant is a volunteer and the length of time the participant has been volunteering.

Further Section A focused on the management practices of volunteering organisations and comprised 24 questions. The questions aimed to collect volunteers’ opinion regarding various aspects of management practice using a 5-point Likert scale with 1 indicating ‘strongly disagree’ while 5 indicated ‘strongly agree’. This questionnaire was based on the earlier work done by (Cuskelly et al. 2006). The items used by Cuskelly et al. (2006) were adapted to the current research by modifying some words. This questionnaire was already tested by Cuskelly et al. (2006).

Section B concentrated on the satisfaction aspect of volunteers. Fourteen questions were used to collect volunteers’ satisfaction about volunteering with their organisation. 14 questions were used which were measured using a 5-point Likert scale with 1 indicating

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‘very dissatisfied’ and 5 indicating ‘very satisfied’. The items were adapted from VSI. This questionnaire has already been validated by Galindo-Kuhn and Guzley (2002). Wordings in the items were slightly modified to suit the purposes of this research.

Section C aimed at collecting the volunteers’ opinion on the motivation behind their volunteering activities. 30 questions were used to measure this construct and the items were adapted from the VFI developed by Clary et al. (1998). Wordings were modified to suit this research. The items were measured using a 5-point Likert scale with 1 indicating ‘not at all important’ and 5 indicating ‘extremely important’.

Section D dwelt on the responses to be collected from volunteers about their intention to remain in a particular volunteering organisation representing their retention by a volunteering organisation. The construct was measured using six questions. The items in this section were adapted from the earlier work conducted by Hoye et al. (2008) by modifying the wordings in some items to suit this research. Three items measured retention using a 5-point Likert scale with 1 indicating ‘strongly disagree’ while 5 indicated ‘strongly agree’ while the remaining three items were measured using 5-point Likert scale but with reverse coding with 1 indicating ‘strongly agree’ while 5 indicated ‘strongly disagree’.

The language used in the survey questionnaire was English as the questionnaire was intended to be distributed to volunteers who regardless any consideration on nationality and common language had to be chosen that is widely used internationally. English was the choice as it is a widely used internationally language. To the best possible extent the questions were made simple, easy to understand and encourage participation in the survey.