DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A PUBLIC BUS SERVICE QUALITY SURVEY IN KUCHING, SARAWAK
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33736/jcest.13309.2026Keywords:
service quality, public bus, user perception, content validity, reliability testingAbstract
A well-structured and validated questionnaire is necessary to guarantee the validity, reliability and relevancy of data gathered. Despite its importance, limited research was done on the methodical creation of survey instruments for public transport studies. This has led to inadequate or irrelevant findings towards bus user perceptions or expectations and probably overlooked the important factor that is governingthe service quality of public bus transport in Kuching. To fill the gap, this study adapted a three-phase questionnaire formulation process which entails the development of a survey questionnaire on service quality, validity and reliability of the public bus transport (SQPB), through a pilot testing. A thorough procedure was developed in this study to ensure that the survey questionnaire was truly relevant and represented the study area, particularly in Kuching, Sarawak. The objectives of this study were to develop a survey questionnaire that was aimed at assessing the service quality of public transport in Kuching, validity of the survey questionnaire through content validation and lastly evaluate reliability of the survey instrument by using the statistical package for the social science (SPSS) software. The findings were focussed on reliability, accessibility, comfort as well as safety and security dimensions in the SQPB questionnaire.For reliability testing, SPSS software was used to study the reliability of items. The result of Cronbach’s alpha value showed more than 0.7 for every domain, which was categorised as high internal consistency and reliability for the questionnaire. Specifically, the Cronbach’s alpha values obtained were 0.707 for reliability, 0.878 for accessibility and 0.770 for comfort dimension. These findings demonstrated that the SQPB questionnaire that was designed particularly in Kuching is a valid and reliable instrument for estimating the service quality factors that led to lower ridership issues in the city. Therefore, this study had strengthened the underlying factors affecting service quality by focussing the context of transport assessment, particularly in a developing urban public transport system.
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