AN ACADEMIC WRITING REVIEW: A pilot study in a quantitative research.

3.5.1    Pilot Study

Pilot Study or pre-study is a method used to assess the validity and reliability of the instrument which was built for the study. Among the aims of the pilot study is to ensure that there are questions in the questionnaire contains items that are easily understood, good content, to avoid confusion and to test the reliability questions. According to Baker (1994), a pilot study used to help the researcher to get an early indication regarding the items in the questionnaire, whether they may or may not be applicable in answering the research questions. Borg and Gall (1983) suggested that a pilot study was conducted prior to the study, which is before the researcher distributes the real questionnaires to the real targeted respondents. Pilot study will reveal the lack of the early research questions, and the researcher had more time to improve their questionnaires before being distributed among the real respondents. This is to avoid more time and costs being wasted. That is one of the advantages of having a pilot study, which is to ensure that the questions in the questionnaire contain easy-to-understand items, good content, avoidance of confusion and incontestability questions. The best is when the researcher did not use the same respondents for their real questionnaire. 

An example, for this pilot study, the respondents of 30 students in one secondary school in a state in Pantai Timur are guided to answer the questionnaire. After collecting all the questionnaire papers, the researcher runs the Alpha Cronbach test to know the reliability of the items in the questionnaire paper.

According to Hair (2003), the level of reliability of an instrument is accepted and showed that the respondents were answering questions or statements consistently and almost accurately. And, this reliability of the items is tested based on the Cronbach Alpha which explains the strength of the relationship between items as shown in Table 3.1 below.

Another example, the pilot study was conducted among students in UTM Skudai regarding the study  of a generic skill among the graduates as a preparation for their job field in future. In this study, a pilot study was conducted on 30 students who became respondents with the distribution of a set of questionnaires to be used in the actual study. Pilot study on this questionnaire is conducted to ensure that the field to be studied is able to provide good and accurate results. According to Azizi Yahya et al. (2006), many efforts and money have been invested throughout the study period from the planning stage to the questionnaire. The questionnaire in this modified study was administered on 30 students who were not involved as a sample of the study. This is to ensure that the questionnaire used has a consistency from the aspects of item level, the objectives and the understanding of the item itself. The findings from the pilot study conducted by using alpha Cronbach test from 44 items in the questionnaire showed that the reliability was 0.981. According to Chua Yan Phiaw (2004) in the Alpha Cronbach Coefficient table demonstrates the value of internal reliability of these items in excellent order and all items are acceptable because of their high reliability. Cronbach's Alpha value is 0.981 and it is approaching the value of 1. The more Cronbach Alpha value approaches to the value of 1 is the best. Here, it can be concluded that the question raised by the researcher is reliable and can be understood by the respondent. The result of the pilot test shows that respondents do not have problems in understanding the questionnaire items. Table 3.2 below shows the findings of the pilot survey.

Table 3.1: Alpha Cronbach

Alpha Coefficient Range	The Strength of The Relationship
< 0.6 0.6 < 0.7 0.7 < 0.8 0.8 < 0.9 0.9	Weak Moderate Good Very Good The Best

Table 3.2: The result of a reliability test 

Case Processing Summary
		N	%
Cases	Valid	29	82.9
	Excludeda	6	17.1
	Total	35	100.0
a. Listwise deletion based on all variables in the procedure.

                                                                                                          

Reliability Statistics
Cronbach's Alpha	N of Items
.981	44

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