Chapter 3 Research Design My research is a study on a group of muslim students in a certain school. I choose a case study as my research design. Case study as a research strategy often emerges as an obvious option for students and other new researchers who are seeking to undertake a modest scale research project based on their workplace or the comparison of a limited number of organisations. (Jennifer Rowley, 2002). Case study as a research method is often indexed in most undergraduate research textbooks as neither quantitative nor qualitative. (Donna M.Zucker, 2009). Case study research excels at bringing us to an understanding of a complex issue or object and can extend experience or add strength to what is already known through previous research. (Sue Soy, 2006). Case studies, in their true essence, explore and investigate contemporary real-life phenomenon through detailed contextual analysis of a limited number of events or conditions, and their relationships. (Zaidah Zainal, 2007). For psychologists, anthropologists and social scientists they have been regarded a case study as a valid method of research for many years. Population and Sample of Research Population for this study is composed of Muslim students studying SMK Kepong Baru in Afternoon Session. Total Muslims in afternoon session is a total of 66 people consisting of students from Form 1 and Form 2. So our afternoon session students study sample. This was done in this study to ensure the validity of the study. If you're doing the wrong sampling will cause some things to happen, such as: 1. Selection error: if any of the elements of the population has a higher probability of being selected than the rest. Let us imagine that we want to measure how satisfied the clients of a gymnasium are, and for that, we are going to interview some of them from 10 to 12 in the morning. This means that the people who go to the gymnasium in the afternoon will not be represented, and then the sample will not be representative of all the clients. A way to avoid this kind of errors is choosing the sample so that all the clients have the same probability of being selected. 2. Non-answer error: it is also possible that some of the elements of the population do not want or cannot answer certain questions. Or it can also happen, when we have a questionnaire including personal questions, that some of the members of the population do not answer honestly. This errors are generally very complicated to avoid, but in case that we want to Research instrument For this study, researchers used questionnaires as a research instrument to collect data and information from the respondents. Survey research is one of the most important areas of measurement in applied social research. The broad area of survey research encompasses any measurement procedures that involve asking questions of respondents. A "survey" can be anything form a short paper-and-pencil feedback form to an intensive one-on-one in-depth interview. (William M.K.Trochim, 2006). A survey is a systematic method of collecting data from a population of interest. It tends to be quantitative in nature and aims to collect information from a sample of the population such that the results are representative of the population within a certain degree of error. This survey will be done on the question of the study. There are 10 items for each question of the study. Scale made in this survey is the Likert scale. A psychometric response scale primarily used in questionnaires to obtain participant’s preferences or degree of agreement with a statement or set of statements. Likert scales are a non‐comparative scaling technique and are unidimensional (only measure a single trait) in nature. Respondents are asked to indicate their level of agreement with a given statement by way of an ordinal scale. Most commonly seen as a 5‐point scale ranging from “Strongly Disagree” on one end to “Strongly Agree” on the other with “Neither Agree nor Disagree” in the middle; however, some practitioners advocate the use of 7 and 9‐point scales which add additional granularity. Sometimes a 4‐point (or other even‐numbered) scale is used to produce an ipsative (forced choice) measure where no indifferent option is available. Each level on the scale is assigned a numeric value or coding, usually starting at 1 and incremented by one for each level. Pilot Study A pilot, or feasibility study, is a small experiment designed to test logistics and gather information prior to a larger study, in order to improve the latter’s quality and efficiency. A pilot study can reveal deficiencies in the design of a proposed experiment or procedure and these can then be addressed before time and resources are expended on large scale studies. Animal experiments are not usually carried out in isolation, but are part of a program of research. A good research strategy requires careful planning and a pilot study will often be a part of this strategy. A pilot study is normally small in comparison with the main experiment and therefore can provide only limited information on the sources and magnitude of variation of response measures. It is unlikely, for example, that a pilot study alone can provide adequate data on variability for a power analysis to estimate the number of animals to include in a well designed experiment. A systematic review of the literature or even a single publication is a more appropriate source of information on variability. The pilot study may, however, provide vital information on the severity of proposed procedures or treatments. I should do a pilot study because the items that will be given to students having doubts meaning items that caused them difficult to answer accurately as understood by the students. So when I want to analyze the data, my research will produce a study about reliability and validity. But if I do a test pilot is understood by the students, so I can continue to take the data given by the students for analysis. The pilot study was conducted to measure the reliability of an instrument. Cronbach Alpha method used for this measurement with the help of SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science) version 11.5. Cronbach's alpha is an index of reliability associated with the variation accounted for by the true score of the "underlying construct." Construct is the hypothetical variable that is being measured (Hatcher, 1994). Alpha coefficient ranges in value from 0 to 1 and may be used to describe the reliability of factors extracted from dichotomous (that is, questions with two possible answers) and/or multi-point formatted questionnaires or scales (i.e., rating scale: 1 = poor, 5 = excellent). The higher the score, the more reliable the generated scale is. Nunnaly (1978) has indicated 0.7 to be an acceptable reliability coefficient but lower thresholds are sometimes used in the literature.