Corporate Performance in Education: Research Instrument

Research Instrument: An Effective Tool To Validate Research Study

Introduction     

            The definite procedure for data collection is by using research instrument and it can be deployed in all areas of life that includes education, mining, health-care, and marketing.”Instruments can be used to measure past behaviors (Concurrent validity), and future behaviors (Predictive validity). (Howard, 1998).The process of investigating past and future event has greatly helped researchers to predict future occurrence of an event. This paper will focus on the guidelines on the use research instrument, characteristics of research instrument, types of research instrument and the origin of research instrument and validation of research study.

The Guideline on the Use of Research Instrument

           Certain criteria have to be met in order to perform research study and researchers must understand moral and legal obligation to ask participants questions during the interview process that will not violate the participants’ fundamental right.”As a research instrument, interviews are theorized (often tacitly) as a revenue for investigating truths, facts, experience, beliefs, attitudes, and/or feelings of respondents” (Talmy, 2010). A research instrument must have the capability to produce facts and genuine feelings of participants. The following guidelines apply to use of research instrument:

·         A researcher must determine the location of the research study.

·         The time and duration of data collection is very important.

·         The frequency and number of time for the data collection.

·         Researchers that are responsible for the data collection.

Characteristic of Research Instrument

      There are three major characteristic of research instrument that includes validity, reliability and objectivity.”Valid instrument is that it measures that it is supposed to measure”(Fraenkel & Wallen,2009,p.111).Validity represent the data and evidence collected by researchers using research instrument and the data is widely acceptable by the larger community. Reliability is another important factor to be considered because data collected from research study using effective and reliable instrument must be consistence and unbiased. Objectivity is concept of elimination of subjective judgment and that can affect the validity of research instrument.

 

Types of Research Instrument

           The primary role of research instrument is to collect data from participants and there are three major types of research instruments that includes researchers instrument, subject instrument and informant instruments. A researcher instrument engaged participants and the researcher complete tally sheet to study the behavior of participants.”Researchers are an integral part of the research process; for many qualitative researchers they become the research instrument”(Moore,2008).The researchers actively involved with participants. It is a qualitative method of research. The subject instrument focuses on the subject matter and the researchers asked participant to complete questionnaires to see participants’ response to various questions that are both open and ended questions. The informant instrument is the way of using rating scale to rate the performance of student and employees in an organization.

The Origin of Research Instrument and Validation of Research Study

        The implementation of historical approach has help researchers to determine the origin of research instrument. Validation of a research study can be achieved by reasoning of all arguments of facts and data.”A research use of argument (RUA) employs the reasoning of informal arguments to explicitly state all the claims and assumptions that are entailed in a particular research study (Ercikan & Roth,2009,p.142). Validation is greatly necessary to check pros and cons of data collected from research study. There are two origin of experiment that includes using of existing experiment and developing a new instrument. Getting an effective instrument requires a lot of time, necessary skills and effort.”Developing one’s own instrument is time consuming, and we do not recommend it for those without a considerable amount time, energy, and money to invest in the endeavour”(Fraenkel & Wallen,2009,p.113). The development of a new instrument is prone to experimental errors and not efficient while using existing standard experimental instrument is efficient and widely acceptable.

 

Conclusion

       This paper has greatly investigated the different types of research instrument and the impacts on research study. The importance of research instrument has greatly been discussed in this paper. The origin of research instrument has been examined  and  the effective function of research instrument to validate research study.