Building Soft-Employability Skills (SES-KIT): Reliability, Face Validity and Content Validity Testing

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to design and validate a survey instrument known as Soft-Employability Skills Kit (SES-KIT) and to assess its reliability among Technical and Vocation Education Training (TVET) students. Through literature review, soft skills are found to be essential factors in employability among TVET graduates. The development of a contemporary instrument to measure students’ soft skills is necessary to promote awareness of the latest employability skills frameworks. SES-KIT was derived based on a mapping of eight employability skills frameworks and the top ten skills in the 21st century skills (World Economic Forum, 2020). Thirty-nine respondents from a TVET institution were included in this pilot study to measure reliability value and five experts were appointed to validate face and content validity. SES-KIT obtained a high reliability score of Cronbach alpha 0.961 and a good scale content validity index (S-CVI/Ave) value of 0.91. The next step of the research is to test this instrument to a larger scale of respondents.