The Questionnaire

In this study, the use of a questionnaire as a quantitative instrument in the initial stage of data collection is aimed at exploring and identifying themes and general challenges which will be further investigated in the follow-up semi-structured interviews with EAP teachers. In this case, a questionnaire consisting of 30 items was designed for the sake of eliciting teachers’ attitudes on existing EAP curriculum challenges for which they were asked to determine the level of agreement on a 5 point Likert scale (1=|Strongly disagree, 2=Disagree, 3=Neither agree nor disagree, 4=Agree, 5=Strongly Agree) (Muijs, 2011, p. 41). The last section of the questionnaire consists of 5 open-ended questions to allow the respondents to further expand their opinions on curriculum challenges in EAP courses. Some of the questionnaire items were designed on the basis of my personal and professional experience of working as an EAP teacher and level coordinator at CAS Sohar. Other questionnaire items were developed from the literature review and previous questionnaires investigating curriculum related issues (e.g. Eslami, 2010; Kutlay, 2012). The questionnaire was administered and distributed to all EAP teachers in the colleges who have developed knowledge on EAP courses and can provide their reflections on existing curriculum challenges (see Appendix 1). New teachers who have been assigned to teach EAP courses at

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the time of collecting the data will be excluded to ensure the quality of the respondents’ views on the investigated issues. Analyzing the questionnaire data is expected to help the researcher in reaching an agreement on the nature of the existing curriculum challenges and will also facilitate the development of focused research questions which will be used in follow-up semi-structured interviews. This careful combination of quantitative and qualitative elements as suggested by Niglas (2009) undoubtedly helped the researcher acquire adequate answers to the research questions.

It was quite important to pilot-test the questionnaire before distributing it to the research participants. Pallant (2007) emphasized the importance of this stage of pilot-testing in order to minimize problems and to ensure the clarity of the questionnaire’s instructions and scale items. Therefore, the questionnaire was sent to seven EAP teachers from various CAS colleges for piloting. Those teachers were asked to fill out the questionnaire and then provide their feedback on the wording, structure and clarity of the items. After the piloting stage, the piloting group of EAP teachers made further suggestions on the questionnaire’s format and structure of some of the items. They also provided constructive feedback pertaining to the restatement of some of the questions which were not clear. The piloting stage not only proved to be successful in minimizing problems with the questionnaire, but also provided valid content to the instrument. According to Muijs (2011) the content validity refers to whether or not the content of the questionnaire items is right to measure the concept which we are attempting to measure. In the piloting stage, respondents were asked to provide their comments not only on the questions but also on the investigated concepts which were addressed by each item in the questionnaire. The piloting stage revealed some instances of ambiguity with certain items in the questionnaire because the teachers who participated in the piloting stage indicated that they had difficulty understanding the intended meaning of some questions. Therefore, a careful revision was required along with the restructuring of some items to enhance the clarity of the questionnaire.

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The piloting stage helped in identifying the following areas that needed to be improved in the questionnaire:

Some participants indicated that the questionnaire items need to be organized according to the three main constructs of the questionnaire. Therefore, the questionnaire was further revised and the scale items were classified according to the main themes of the questionnaire which are EAP curriculum, teachers’ role in curriculum and professional development.

Some participants felt that Q3 in the demographic section in the questionnaire which asked the participants to specify their educational background by selecting the option that best describe their ELT qualification was not clear. The last option in Q3 which was ‘a Degree in a relevant subject taught and assessed in English’ required modification and therefore changed to ‘A qualification in (ELT) (e.g. TESOL, CELTA, DELTA, Trinity TEFL certificate).

The questionnaire consists of three sections. The first section was intended to reveal the demographic information about the participants and the second part included thirty questions and was primarily focused on exploring the participants’ general perceptions on the study’s major constructs which relate to the main research questions. The first category of the questions focused on the investigation of EAP curriculum challenges confronted by teachers at CAS. The second category of questions was designed to elicit the participants’ views on how curriculum development can be achieved and the last category of the questions related to the investigation of professional development practices which could enhance curriculum development. The last section of the questionnaire consisted of five open-ended questions designed to allow the participants to elaborate on the investigated issues. The questionnaire was sent to a sample of one hundred teachers, which is equal to the total number of teachers involved in teaching EAP courses at CAS colleges. Approximately 80 out of the 100 teachers participated in the study by filling out the electronically distributed questionnaire. Most of the participants who completed the on-line questionnaire were expat teachers as

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illustrated in the descriptive statistics of the categorical variables. The quantitative analysis also indicated that a significant number of the participants have long teaching experiences. It was further indicated that 69% of the participants held a Masters Degrees in ELT or a related field.

With respect to the reliability of the questionnaire on which the closed-questions’ section is based, the internal consistency was assessed by applying the Cronbach’s coefficient alpha test. This test required the use of SPSS software to ‘provide an indication of the average correlation among all the items that make up the scale’ (Pallant, 2007, p. 6). In order to make a judgment on the internal consistency of the questionnaire items, Muijs (2011) suggested that the measure obtained from the statistical test is expected to be above .700. To measure the reliability of the scale, a correlation coefficient test was done through the use of the SPSS software indicating a reliability measurement of over (.801).