Investigating Broadband Diffusion in the Household: Towards Content Validity and Pre-Test of the Survey Instrument

Studies on broadband diffusion are just beginning to emerge and exploratory in nature. Progress has been made to develop conceptual models to understand diffusion and adoption of broadband from the consumer perspective. However in order to test the conceptual model of broadband diffusion, a reliable survey instrument is yet to be developed and validated. Therefore, the aim of this research in progress paper is to perform content validity and pre-test a survey instrument. The objectives of this paper are: first, to ‘ identify’ constructs and their respective items that adequately cover relevant dimensions of factors that affects consumers in the domain of broadband diffusion; second, to ‘determine’ whether the identified constructs and respective items sufficiently cover relevant dimensions of the factors affecting consumers in the domain of broadband diffusion; and third, to conduct a ‘ pre-test’ on resulting survey instruments in order to obtain feedback for improvements before finalising the questionnaire. Initial items for each construct were identified from both technology adoption literature and exploratory studies on broadband adoption. Validation of the identified items was then performed employing variations of a quantitative approach to content validity. The findings obtained from content validation are then presented and discussed thereafter. Finally, the paper is concluded by emphasising the limitations of content validation and setting the future research direction towards investigating broadband diffusion in the household context.