Validity and reliability of a questionnaire developed to explore quality assurance components for teaching and learning in vocational and technical education

Abstract

Most vocational and technical education (VTE) educational systems invest in quality assurance for teaching and learning to improve the skills of the workforce that would contribute to socio-economic development. Quality assurance provides confidence in educational services to meet the quality desires of teaching and learning settings. Yet it has been reported that there are challenges in teaching and learning effectiveness due to a lack of technological breakthroughs among students, resulting in an insufficiently skilled workforce. The primary aim of this study is to develop and validate a questionnaire for quality assurance for teaching and learning in vocational and technical education. The questionnaire was developed based on the data obtained by item generation through an interview with quality managers, administrators, and lecturers and a literature review. The content validity of the quality assurance for teaching and learning (QATL) questionnaire was validated using expert judgment. The principal component analysis (PCA) and orthogonal varimax techniques examined the structures and validity of the quality components. After exploratory factor analysis on the quality components under input, process, and output domains, the input quality factors explained 78.81% of the cumulative variance, the process quality factors explained 72.679% of the cumulative variance, and the output quality factors explained 75.027% of the cumulative variance. The analysis used Cronbach’s alpha to test the internal consistency reliability, and the alpha values ranged from 0.835 to 0.963, indicating very high reliability. Present findings suggest that the QATL is a valid and reliable instrument for assessing quality components of quality assurance for teaching and learning in vocational and technical education. These quality components enable optimal VTE objective achievement if implemented in teaching and learning.