DESIGN OF RESEARCH INSTRUMENT FOR EVALUATING THE CONTRIBUTION OF MASS HOUSING UNIQUE FEATURES ON PROJECT TEAM COMMUNICATION PERFORMANCE 1 Proceedings of the 4 th International Conference on Infrastructure Development in Africa – Kumasi, Ghana, 25 th -26th March, 2015 DESIGN OF RESEARCH INSTRUMENT FOR EVALUATING THE CONTRIBUTION OF MASS HOUSING UNIQUE FEATURES ON PROJECT TEAM COMMUNICATION PERFORMANCE 1 Titus Ebenezer Kwofie*, 2 Frank Fugar, 3 Emmanuel Adinyira and 4 Divine Ahadzie *Corresponding Author Titus Ebenezer Kwofie, teeagk@yahoo.co.uk +233(0)244721622 1,2,3 Department of Building technology, Kwame Nkrumah University of science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana 4 Centre for Settlement Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana ABSTRACT The continuous emphasis on the prevalence of communication ineffectiveness in mass housing delivery inherent from the unique particularities of mass housing projects remains a critical challenge towards the needed improvement in project management efficiencies and planning in housing and infrastructural delivery in developing countries. Against this, continuous research in communication performance measures is critical towards managerial and communication effectiveness needed in MHPs delivery especially in developing countries. In this paper, the development of a suitable research instrument (RI) is presented towards the evaluation of the contribution of the unique features to mass housing projects (MHPs) on project team communication performance. It also presents the underling theoretical background and the conceptual model that outline the two main attribution factors of communication performance on MHPs. However, the RI is designed to focus on the project related (external) factors. Drawing on the main philosophical underpinning of the study, the adopted and developed dependent and independent variables have been operationalized to reflect the unique mass housing project (MHP) environment as well as the practical and the theoretical perspective of developing country like Ghana. It is anticipated that by focusing on the projected related factors, a significant contribution will be made towards addressing the communication performance challenges inherent from the unique project environment in developing countries in MHPs management. Keywords: project team communication performance, mass housing projects, , research instrument (RI), communication ineffectiveness 1.0 INTRODUCTION Choosing and designing the most suitable and appropriate research instrument (RI) for collecting relevant data for a study plays a critical role in the data collection process to meet research goals in project management research. It is affirmed that the choice of appropriate instrument is mainly grounded on the aim, the nature of research questions and the philosophical underpinning of the given study (Saunders, 2007; Creswell, 2009). However,