Development and validation of instrument for assessing researchers participation in e-collaboration

Abstract

The advancement of recent technology for conducting research helped researcher in many ways such as collaborate in real time, sharing knowledge, accessing unlimited resources of information and produce better research outcomes. However, the advantage of this technology can only be achieved if the researcher participates in e-collaboration. This paper discusses the instrument to examine researcher’s participation in e-collaboration. The framework for collaborative technologies was used to develop the instrument. This study was conducted by using a questionnaire survey method. The instrument then tested by using sample of 50 researchers from five research universities in Malaysia, which are UTM, UKM, UM, USM and UPM. The respondents who took part in the survey were lecturer, postgraduate student, research assistant and research fellow who had experience in using e-collaboration tool in conducting their research activities. Smart PLS software was used to evaluate the instrument validity and reliability, and the report shows that all instrument used are acceptable. The final instrument contains of 34 items measurement scales.