A Study of the Reliability and Validity of the Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Instrument in Arabic

摘要

There are difficulties associated with the use of English language versions of cohesive psychometricinstruments tomeasure Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) in a non-English speaking business environment.These instruments are generally composed in English and are most suited to Western culture. Use of theseinstruments in an alternative language can lead to problems in terms of translation and culture. Forexample, there are often linguisticvariations in a literal translation of questions or items, which can lead tosubtle orperhaps significantlyaltered meanings in the translated instruments, an issue that may jeopardisethe validity and reliabilityofmeasurements.This articlediscusses research into the formulation of an Arabic version of the Leader-Member Exchange(LMX) instrument. A literal translation of the LMX was applied to 433 employees at the KingAbdulazizUniversity (KAU) and the outcome generated a greater degree of internal validity tothatgenerated by the English language versions.