Wheats 1991 hss and ziegenfuss and singhapadkis 1994

Wheat’s (1991) HSS and Ziegenfuss and Singhapadki’s (1994) IIA code of ethics
instruments in studies in Malaysia, as demonstrated in this study. However, the
reliability coefficient computed for Islamic knowledge and internal audit knowledge is
quite low at .61. Nonetheless, the use of this instrument to measure this construct is still
acceptable as other studies involving lower values, such as .43 and .39 in Tan and Kao ’s
(1999) and Tan and Libby’s (1997) studies, have been deemed equally acceptable, given
the composite nature of such construct. Table 4.13 summarizes the Cronbach’s alpha
coefficients of the constructs.
Table 4.13 : Reliability Test
COMPONENTS ON THE
FUNCTIONS OF SHARIAH
AUDIT
CRONBACH’S ALPHA N OF ITEMS
List of Task Complexity Questions 0.80 13
Islamic Knowledge 0.60 10
Internal Audit Knowledge 0.61 10
Spirituality 0.91 25
Ethics 0.92 11
In addition, a correlation analysis was performed in the pilot study to examine the
degree of association between the two metric variables. The correlation analysis showed
the direction and the strength of relation, which provided additional support to test the
research hypotheses of this study. In fact, the correlation analysis was performed to
examine whether there is a significant relation between the main independent variable
(i.e., spirituality) and the dependent variable ( shariah auditing performance).
Establishing such relation was important to help the researcher to investigate the effects
of moderator variables, namely task complexity, knowledge, and ethics, on the shariah
auditing performance. Baron and Kenny (1986) state that the basic moderator effect can
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be represented by an interaction between an independent variable and a factor that may
affect or specify the appropriate conditions of the relation. Therefore, a correlation
analysis was conducted on spirituality and shariah auditing performance, which showed
a moderate and positive association between the two variables, as indicated by the
computed coefficient of .57.
4.4.3
External and Internal Validity
Validity is one of the important factors in determining the quality of research. In
particular, validity will determine whether a researcher’s conclusion based on the
research results is true (valid), or false (invalid), to help explain the actual state of a
phenomenon accurately (McBurney and White, 2010). Furthermore, Shadish et al.
(2002) state that validity is all about “inferences” and the extent to which relevant
evidence supports those inferences. They also proposed four types of validity that must
be considered in designing and evaluating research, namely internal validity, construct
validity, external validity, and statistical conclusion validity. Table 4.14 summarizes the
categorizations of validity based on Shadish et al's (2002) and McBurney and White's
(2010) work.