Microsoft Word 2007 ichrie conference Proceedings Final-Final 06-06-07. doc

 
METHODOLOGY 
Data Collection & Survey Instrument Development 
The data for this study was collected from members of an international tourism and event trade association 
based in Boise, Idaho, USA. The data collection was conducted through an online member survey before the 
deployment of a knowledge sharing system for their association in a web-based environment. The primary objective 
of this system was to provide a knowledge storing repository and a platform that enables efficient and effective 
knowledge sharing among members of the association. A news item describing the concept and objectives of the 
system and the announcement of online survey were provided to all members on the association’s Web site. An e-
mail letter from the association’s president repeating the survey information and an embedded survey site URL was 
then sent in the beginning of May 2006 to 2000 members who were registered in the association database. A second 
email letter was sent to all registered members two weeks after the initial e-mail to encourage more participation. 
The total period of data collection lasted for one month. 188 valid surveys were obtained during such period 
resulting in about 9% online response rate. Based on the in-depth literature review, a 34-item survey instrument was 
developed. The measures to operationalize the constructs in the research model were mainly adopted from prior 
research in knowledge management, online communities, and social capital research. All question items were 
measured on a five-point Likert-type scale with 1 being strongly disagree and 5 being strongly agree. A pretest for 
the online survey was conducted with 20 subjects (i.e., graduate students and faculty members from a major 
university in US Northeast region). Minor modifications were made to the survey instrument based on comments 
collected during this pretest. The measurement items and their literature sources are summarized in Table 1. Of the 
34 items, 6 were related to demographics for other internal use and not included in the analysis.

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