Resultados estructura sintáctica Generalización

Since the current study was conducted in Malaysia where the national language is the Malay language, all measures were translated from English to Malay by the researcher. Then, the translated questionnaires in Malay were translated back into English by independent bilingual translators. The translation and back translation were carried out in consultation with University Malaysia Terengganu academic staff (one from the Department of Psychology and Counselling and one from the English Department). In addition, the researcher worked with staff from the Learning Support Services, Victoria University, Melbourne in order to check the compatibility between the original English questionnaire with the back translation version.

Subsequently, pre-testing of the questionnaires in the Malay language was conducted among friends and acquaintances who volunteered from the Malay community in Melbourne, Australia. Their feedback was used to ensure that no

100 errors or oversights of problems were left in the draft questionnaire before starting the fieldwork in Malaysia (see Alreck & Settle, 1995; Baker, 2003 for the use of a similar procedure).

Incorporating the pre-testing exercise, the present study pre-tested the questionnaires with a lecturer from the Department of Psychology and Counselling, University Malaysia Terengganu, Human Resource Managers in organisations that gave consent for the researcher to approach their employees, doctoral students from the Victoria University and a group of ten Malaysian employees in Melbourne. To explain the background of this research project for evaluators, the volunteer evaluators involved in the pre-testing exercise were provided with a brief outline of the research proposal (e.g. research objectives and research questions) which assisted them to evaluate clarity, readability and relevancy of the items and statements in the Malaysian language questionnaire.

In general, the feedback included queries regarding the clarity of items or sentences, which needed paraphrasing or restructuring. Further, a few evaluators commented on the length of the questionnaire which took approximately 45 minutes to complete. With regard to the comment on the clarity of the sentences, ambiguous words were substituted with clearer expressions. With regard to the concerns regarding the length of the questionnaire, the researcher decided to proceed to pilot study for further comment. The Malay version was translated back into English. It was important to ensure there would be no translation errors that could change the meaning of important content. Whenever the meaning of an item was found to differ from the original item in the English questionnaire it was translated again.

Prior to the data collection, a pilot study was conducted in July 2009 in which the researcher administered the Malay version questionnaires to 150 Malaysian workers in Melbourne and Malaysia. The pilot survey respondents completed the questionnaire anonymously. Teijlingen and Hundley (2001) highlighted several advantages of conducting a pilot study including advance warning against the possibility of research failure if the proposed methods or instruments prove not to be appropriate or too complicated to carry out.

101 All the employees involved in the pilot study were as similar as possible in terms of demographics to the sample intended to be recruited later in Malaysia. Most of the pilot study participants were engineers, technicians and supervisors. The researcher explained the significance of the study and the importance of the respondents‟ cooperation in finalising the final questionnaires. There was a space provided for them to make comments and to indicate the time taken to complete the whole questionnaire.

In general, the pilot respondents reported that the questionnaires were understandable and clear. However, the issue of the length of the questionnaire was raised again. On average, respondents took about 30 to 45 minutes to complete the questionnaire. To address this issue, none of the original items of questionnaires were dropped; however, the format of the questionnaire was revised to improve readability. For example, the revision of the questionnaire layout decreased the total number of pages from 10 to 7. Those who completed the questionnaires in the pilot study phase were given a token of appreciation (a pen and key-chain). The pilot study data were used only to receive feedback on the instrument and were excluded from further analysis.

3.5.1 Reliability of instruments

In conducting the research, two important characteristics of the measures needed to be maintained, namely, reliability and validity. These two criteria of measurement need to be established in order to reduce measurement errors. Reliability refers to “the degree to which the observed variable measures the true value and is error free” (Hair, Black, Babin, Anderson and Tatham, 2006, p.8). Reliability in essence defines the consistency of measurement over time and between different sections within a psychological questionnaire focusing on the same underlying construct. That is, a good measurement scale must produce reliable results when the measurement is taken repeatedly or between the sections measuring the same construct. In psychological research, psychologists often measure a hidden construct by a psychological measurement scale comprising multiple items. Some questionnaire items within such as a scale may be more accurate than other items in measuring the construct. According to Black (1999), Cronbach‟s alpha provides reliability coefficients which indicate the internal consistency of a scale. Based on 82

102 (55% return rate) usable collected pilot questionnaires, Table 1 presents the alpha coefficients of all instruments used. The higher the Cronbach‟s alpha values (closer to 1), the higher the reliability of the scale (Sekaran, 2003).

Overall, alpha coefficients for all sets of variables obtained a high reliability ranging from .70 to .95. However, a slightly low Cronbach‟s alpha value for job control (α = .64) was reported. Similarly, for one aspect of job affective wellbeing, the alpha coefficient was also below a rule of thumb criterion for desirability measure (α = 0.67). However, it has been suggested that a minimum value of .50 is acceptable as an indication of reliability (Hair, Anderson, Tatham & Black, 1995, 1998; Nunnally, 1967). Details of the internal consistency of measured instrument measures are presented in Table 3.4.

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Table 3. 4.Internal consistency of the instrument measures based on the pilot

study

Variable Measures Pilot study

α Previous studies α Psychosocial work environment -Job demands -Job control -Social support .70 .64 .83 .72 .82 .83 (Pelfrene et al., 2001) Organisational justice Composite: -Procedural -Interactional -Distributive .93 .93 .94 .91 Composite: .90 (Elovainio et al., 2002) Work family conflict -Work to family conflict (WFC) -Family to work conflict (FWC) .95 .95 .89 .85

(Frye & Breaugh, 2004)

Job satisfaction Job satisfaction .76 .91

(Bruck et al., 2002) Affective wellbeing - Anxiety-Comfort

(A-C) -Depression - Pleasure (D-P) -Bored-enthusiastic (B-E) -Tiredness-Vigor (T-V) -Angry-Placid (A-P). .67 .79 .80 .70 .71 .85 .84 .79 .81 .86 (Daniels, 2000) Rego and Cunha (2006):

between .66 and .79 Life satisfaction Life satisfaction .91 .86

(Noor, 2006) Positive affect negative affect -Positive affect -Negative affect .91 .95 .88 .87

(Gallagher & Vella- Brodrick, 2008) Psychological wellbeing - Emotional -Social -Psychological .91 .90 .89 Composite: .92

(Borja & Callahan, 2008)

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3.5.2 Validity of instruments

In addition to reducing measurement error by assessing the reliability of the scale, this study also conducted a test to validate the instruments. Validity refers to “the degree to which a measure accurately represents what it is supposed to” (Hair et al., 2006, p.8). In this section, content and construct validity are discussed further.

Content validity refers to the extent to which an empirical measurement reflects a specific domain of content (Carmines & Zeller, 1979). With respect to this validity, all the variables are derived from an extensive review of previous literature (e.g. Daniels, 2000; Diener et al., 1985; Karasek, 1985; Moorman, 1991; Netemeyer et al., 1996). Thus, the items have been tested successfully over many years and found to be valid. However, in order to ensure the content validity of the instruments measured, this study employed pre-testing of instruments involving academic experts and practitioners as well as employees compatible with the context of this study.

Construct validity is concerned with the extent to which a particular measure relates to other measures, consistent with theoretically derived hypotheses concerning the concepts that are being measured (Carmines & Zeller, 1979, p.22). Although principal components analysis (PCA) was not conducted in the pilot data (since the pilot sample size was too small to produce a reliable result) PCA was employed in the main data analysis. The decision to administer the questionnaires to the final respondents was based upon the content validity derived from the literature and volunteer evaluators‟ revisions during pre-testing and pilot studies. For the purpose of establishing construct validity, exploratory factor analysis was undertaken with the final data set in order to identify the dimensions of the constructs and also to identify which items belonged to each particular dimension.