Page 178 - Contributed Paper Session (CPS) - Volume 7

CPS2056 Nurul Hafizah Azizan et al.

Validation of Measurement Instrument for
Survey Research: A Review of Rating Scales
Related Factors
Nurul Hafizah Azizan, Zamalia Mahmud, Adzhar Rambli
Faculty of Computer and Mathematical Science, Universiti Teknologi MARA

Abstract
The use of a questionnaire as a measurement instrument has been recognized
for many years before. It is a tool most widely used in a survey by many
researchers regardless of field of studies. In fact, the questionnaire is
considered a powerful tool to gain information on the phenomenon of interest
from respondents. A well-validated questionnaire is an important requirement
to guarantee the quality of the data obtained. There are several factors that
may influence the quality of the constructed questionnaire. One of them is the
choice of rating scales to be used. In this paper, several number of articles was
reviewed to examine the effect of rating scales used in a survey on the quality
of the measurement instrument. These include validity and reliability. Studies
conducted by several researchers have found that the types of rating scale,
specifically the number of response categories used in constructing the
questionnaire will affect its validity and reliability. From the review, it was
found that validity and reliability were relatively poor for four and less point
scales. In addition, it also revealed that 5-point and 7-point scales produced
better validity and reliability. Meanwhile, for the scale point beyond seven,
there was no significant improvement in validity and reliability indexes. In
addition, the scales with end points labelled produced much lower reliability
indexes compared to the scales options clearly labelled on each category.

Keywords
Measurement instrument; questionnaire; rating scales; validity; reliability

1. Introduction
The quality of a measurement instrument used plays a key role in ensuring
the quality of data gained in the survey. In fact, only with a well-developed
instrument, the quality of the data obtained can be preserved. Questionnaire
is a well-known measurement instrument used by most of the researchers. It
is a powerful tool used for collecting data in survey research. When conducting
a survey, researchers usually deal with either observed and unobserved types
of variables. Observed variables such as gender, income, race and education
level are directly measurable. In contrast, the unobserved variables; for
instance, life satisfaction, happiness, stress, anxiety, loyalty etc. cannot be
directly measured from respondents. This is because these types of variables

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