Pilot Study
Before the main study, a pilot study of the penultimate NMP-Q was conducted with a
convenience sample of 86 undergraduate students from the population, who were not included in
the sample for the main study. The sample consisted of 11 male students (12.8%) and 75 female
35
students (87.2%) aged 18-24 with a mean age of 19. The NMP-Q was administered in a large
undergraduate class. Rather than identifying the factor structure of the questionnaire, the purpose
of the pilot study was to see whether the NMP-Q produced reliable scores because the sample
size was relatively small to perform exploratory factor analysis and thus to make informed
decisions about the factor structure of the questionnaire, which is explained in greater detail in
the next section.