DOMINANT PRACTICES AND GUIDE FOR CREATING EFFECTIVE SURVEY SCALES IN SOCIAL SCIENCES

The data is useless if the measure is not reliable and valid. The current paper is an attempt to bridge the gap of developmental issues regarding theory and practice of valid scales. The researches on the scale development practices found very few sound practices among management sciences practitioners and researchers engaged in new scale development (Razzaq & Aftab, 2015; Hinkin, 1995). Similarly, Fornaciari, Sherlock, Ritchie, & Lund (2005) reported in their analysis of methodologies and practices of scale development from 1994- 2004 that only 6% studied conducted confirmatory factor analysis for scale development and only 3% mentioned descriminant validity. One of the main reasons is that developing valid and accurate scales is an ardent and lengthy process, therefore, in general researchers tend to develop measures without going through the rigorous procedure of scale development (Schmitt, 1991). The trend of developing scale is escalated but the lack of rigorous procedure to develop and validate the scale remains a grey area (Razzaq, 2017). A step wise guide is proposed integrating main theories from Domain of the content to evaluating the items (Item correlations, Cronbach Alpha, EFA (PCA) reconfirmed by CFA for new scales and establishing content, Construct and Criterion validity. Keywords: Scale Development, Validity Analysis, Questtionnaire Development.