In my previous article Questionnaire development in theses and dissertation, I have discussed about the questionnaire development process, the next step is to administer the questionnaire. Questionnaire administration in a proper way and to chose the sample from population is important. It assists the researcher in incurring actual data.
Merriam Webster defines questionnaire as “a written set of questions that are given to people in order to collect facts or opinion about something”. For a researcher, however, questionnaire refers to a set of questions developed “for obtaining statistically useful or personal information from individuals”
Structural equation modelling (SEM) is a century-old statistical method that witnessed progression over time. Initially, the model focused only on path analysis. However, with the growth in usage of SEM in social science, the factor analysis technique was integrated into it. Presently SEM is a powerful multivariate technique applicable in scientific investigations to evaluate and test the multivariate casual relationships. The challenge today is that research problems are of different kinds and there are multiple models. Therefore, it is essential to understand the basics before applying structural equation modelling in research.
The principles of validity and reliability in SEM are used to assess the quality of research. They reflect the accuracy with which a method, approach, or test measures a problem.
The calculation of the sample size is to determine the number of units or items that a researcher needs to include in the sample. Sample size calculation is the fourth step of sampling design and comes after the identification of the population.