used by a qualitative researcher. The documents that were used are of those which Bogdan and Biklen 2003: 127 have called as official documents. They state that
qualitative researchers are now beginning to make use of such documents as their primary sources. Therefore, in this research, the researcher was interested in the
documents themselves and used the interviews as supplementary instrument. The researcher‟s analysis of the documents functioned to answer the second research
problem, namely how the national final examination year 2007 for vocational high schools meets the criteria of content validity.
D. Data Gathering Techniques
In this research, the researcher used documents as the primary sources of descriptive data. They were document of national final examination year 2007 for
vocational high schools and document of Standard Graduate‟s Competence year
2007 for vocational high schools. The researcher obtained the copy of those documents from SMKN 2 Depok, Sleman, one of vocational high school in
Yogyakarta. Nevertheless, the research was not focused on the concerning vocational high school.
The document of national final examination was the one that the researcher mainly observed to find out the validity. The researcher analyzed the
validity of the test in reference to the theory of validity elaborated in the previous chapter. He checked the consistency and relevance of each test item to the
materials included in the concerning test specifications. During the process of his observation, the researcher might take some notes on particular findings. However,
he made a copy of the document at first so as to make it easier to do the analysis of each test item.
Data that were obtained from this kind of analysis were descriptive because the researcher did not deal with any numerical data nor did he work on
particular calculation. The researcher checked the test item‟s relevance to the
teaching materials in the test specifications as well as described it. Preceding the analysis of the test items, the researcher conducted several
non-structural interviews with two vocational high school practitioners. The interviewees were a supervisor for vocational high schools in Yogyakarta and a
practitioner at SMKN 2 Depok Sleman, Yogyakarta. The interviews were conducted in order for the researcher to get a clearer picture about School-level
Curriculum, its difference from Competency-based Curriculum, and also about national final examination for vocational high schools in relation to the latter. The
information about the two curriculums was important in that it helped the researcher decide whichever factors were to take into account in his research, and
whichever were not. Therefore, the interviews were conducted in order to support the researche
r‟s analysis of the test items. The researcher also conducted some short interviews in order to gather
other descriptive data about face validity of the national final examination. The interviews were conducted to some lecturers and students of English Education
Study Program of Sanata Dharma University, on the reason that the have already had background knowledge about face validity of language tests.
E. Data Analysis Techniques
