The number thirty is often used as the sample size in multiple questionnaires and identified as appropriate for validation of nursing research. However, this is not the best tool or strategy for sample size selection for development and validation, and this often causes immediate rejections of manuscripts. This editorial aims to provide an overview of the appropriate sample size for questionnaire development and validation. The article is the amalgamation of technical literature and lessons learned from our experiences in developing, validating, or adapting a number of questionnaires.
Survey-based studies are ubiquitous in medical, social, economic, psychological and behavioural research, where questionnaires are often used as the main research tool to collect various information from respondents. Given the importance of questionnaires to research, ensuring the validity of the questionnaires is critical to producing high quality survey research. Therefore, this article describes a step-by-step systematic approach to questionnaire development and validation for research purposes.
The present study is an attempt to describe the development and validation of an inter-language pragmatic questionnaire to examine the kind of instructional approaches and techniques that EFL teachers use to practice the pragmatic features in their classes. The research made use of two theories; cognitive processing and language socialization theories. The participants include 366 EFL Iranian instructors .The methodology part consists of two parts; instrument development and validation. Based on the exploratory factor analysis, 31 items including five separate factors emerged: pragmatic awareness-raising techniques, pragmatic communicative practice technique, pragmatic corrective feedback technique, culture teaching techniques and pragmatic instructional approaches. Therefore, a questionnaire including 31 items was developed which followed the 5-point Likert technique of scale construction where 1 shows “Never" and 5 denotes "Always". The reliability and factorial validity of the questionnaire are also illustrated. Finally, the potential theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.
Establishing appropriate sample size for developing and validating a questionnaire in nursing research
