Defining Professional Communication Skills for Malaysian Gradu­ates: Looking at trustworthiness

Lincoln and Guba (1985) posit that trustworthiness of a qualitative research study is important to evaluate its worth. The use of data analysis software like ATLAS.ti raises the issue of trustworthiness–specifically: credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability–in defining the Professional Communication Skills (PCS) for Malaysian graduates. In this study, PCS for the workplace is defined by the Malaysian stakeholders: employers of the private sector, the Malaysian government, and academia. ATLAS.ti was utilised to analyze and triangulate data from in-depth interview recordings, annual reports, Human Resource documents, government policies as well as documents from academia. By using ATLAS.ti, meticulous, yet rapid and concise data analysis can be carried out without risking trustworthiness. It is believed that ATLAS.ti has helped to develop the PCS framework in order to help instructors and policy makers of Malaysian HEIs in making a sound judgment in teaching PCS in classrooms. Since ATLAS.ti covers the issue of transferability, a similar study can be replicated from time to time to ensure that the PCS framework is updated, based on the needs of the stakeholders, which then help to develop the graduates’ potential to be more marketable employees