Pretesting Impact of Operational Complexity in Malaysia’s Electrical and Electronics Manufacturing Industry

Scientific research requires data collection instrument that is valid and reliable. This paper describes the framework and operationalization of the variables before outlining the process of developing the instrument to assess the impact of operational complexity (OC) on quality management (QM) practices and operational performance (OP) relationships in Malaysia’s Electrical and Electronics (E E) manufacturing industry. It also highlights issues of common method bias, reliability and validity of the instrument, pretest method and response rate. The pretest result is then discussed. The paper concludes that personal interviews are especially effective in detecting ambiguity in the instrument. Pilot run provides insights to the challenges ahead such as low response rate, tedious data analysis procedures and enables informed decision to be made in preparation for full-scale data collection.