Observation Research Instruments and Data Gathering Technique
41 stages are question development, questionnaire development, and polishing pilot
test. In the stage one, question development has purpose to establish how to phrase each question and to evaluate how respondents interprete
the questions‟ meaning. The researcher in this stage evaluated each statement based on the
respondents‟ understanding about the statements. If none of the respondents asked about the statements and they clearly understand what the meaning of the
statements were, it could be concluded that the statements in the questionnaire are clear enough to be distributed. In the stage two, questionnaire development, it
enables the further evaluation of individual items and the questionnaire as a whole. The researcher identified the flow of the questionnaire. The researcher evaluated
whether the transition from one section into another section were jump quickly or smooth enough. The time that the respondents spent to fill the questionnaire can
be used as the consideration for the researcher. If the respondents take too long to fill the questionnaire, the questionnaire might be not clear, too difficult to be
understood or there are some similar statements.
In stage three, the researcher polished pilot test by revised questions when necessary, shortened the questionnaire, reordered the questions and finalized
the skip patterns. The researcher used the information gained from the stage two to polish pilot test. The researcher make a mark on the statements that the
respondents usually ask. The respondents usually ask about the meaning of the words that they did not understand or not familiar yet. The researcher revised the
difficult words into simple words that the respondents were familiar with those words. The statements that looked similar will be chosen one to avoid the
42 redundancy. Open-ended questionnaire can be revised by evaluating the answers
that the respondents gave. The result of the pilot testing showed that there were two questions that cannot be understood by the respondents. Both of the two
questions were omitted by the researcher based on the consideration that those two questions did not support the data that the researcher needed.
Second is pilot testing questionnaire. Vaus 2002 explains that there are at least four things should be carefully checked, they are flow, question skips,
timing, and respondent interest and attention. The flow of the questionnaire is needed to see the transitions from one section to another are smooth or not. The
researcher identified whether the questionnaire moved too quickly or jumped from one topic to another topic too quickly or not. In the question skips, the
researcher ‟s evaluation based on the question instructions to ensure that the
instructions guided the respondents through the questionnaire directly. Timing also needed in checking the questionnaire. If the respondents take too long to fill
the questionnaire, the researcher could gain some idea of how much needs to be cut for the final questionnaire. The researcher looked from respondents
‟ interest and attention, if respondents seem to be getting bored, the questionnaire may be
too long. The statements should be restructured, removed or placed at the end of the questionnaire.