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English (Manjunath & Kurian, 2009). Therefore, since English is not the first language
of India, the survey questionnaires were translated into Indian languages of Hindi
(national language) and Tamil (regional language). Following recommendations by
Adler (1983) the translation was conducted with the help of academic translators
practising in these languages and the translated version was then back translated to the
original version to check compatibility between the two versions.
3.6 Pilot Study
Prior to primary data collection, survey questionnaires were pilot tested on two
hospitality human resource managers in the Indian hospitality industry and ten
postgraduate students enrolled in hospitality studies at AUT University. Although the
research measures have been proven to have good reliability scores in previous studies,
the pilot test was conducted to ensure readability of each measure. The feedback from
the pilot study was minimal and limited to grammatical errors, so only a few
corrections were made prior to beginning the main data collection.
3.7 Data Collection Procedure
This research used the survey method of data collection, so two sets of survey
questionnaires targeting the frontline workers and their immediate supervisors were
prepared. The field work was conducted during the months of December 2011 and
January 2012. An extensive list of contacts was established using the researcher’s
contacts from previous work experience in the Indian hospitality industry. Ten
hospitality organisations in the Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka were
approached to seek their participation. To maintain confidentiality, details of the
organisations are not provided in this thesis. Eight organisations agreed to participate
in this study. Out of these eight organisations, establishment A was a chain of
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