The Development of an Instrument for Measuring Job Autonomy of Malaysian School Teachers: A Content Validity Study

Measuring job autonomy has always been a daunting task for not only researchers but also practitioners. Various ways and methods have been developed but self-reported measures remain the most popular for researchers. The extant literature provides ample self-reported instrument which can be used to gauge job autonomy. However, given that the degree and scope of job autonomy differs according to the type of job title, the available instruments cannot be conveniently adopted without going through the process of assessing the validity. This paper reports the findings of content validity exercise for self-reported job autonomy instrument for Malaysian school teachers. The chosen instrument was originally developed for a study involving students’ perspective and due to that, an issue of validity could arise when the instrument is to be used by practicing teachers especially those with long years of experience. Using a pre-testing approach of questionnaire development, the chosen instrument was refined and extended from 13 items to 20 items measuring four dimensions of job autonomy. The results of the content validity index assessment suggest that the revised instrument is acceptably valid to be used by Malaysian school teachers or teachers from other developing countries that have similarities and resemblance in their job scopes.