Strategic Orientations, Access to Finance, and SMEs Performance in Thailand: Data Screening and Preliminary Analysis

This study aimed to conduct a data screening and preliminary analysis about the effect of strategic orientations towards SMEs performance and the moderating effect of access to finance in Thailand’s gem and jewelry industry. Samples of 310 were selected from the population of 1,601 SMEs operating in Thailand’s gem and jewelry business using a systematic sampling technique to collect the data. In addition, data diagnostics were performed to meet the preliminary assumptions for further multivariate analysis, particularly an advanced Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis. Thus, the study carried out response rate, missing data analysis, non-response bias test, normality test, assessment of outliers, common method bias test, and multicollinearity test. Likewise, all the assessments were conducted through the IBM SPSS 20, G*Power 3.1, and SmartPLS 3.2.8 software. Conclusively, the data met the requirements for further multivariate analysis, but the normality test still needed to be met. Although, the normality assumption was not met, the non-normally distributed samples can be analyzed further since PLS-SEM works well with non-normal data distributions. This study contributes to the current literature as it will steer other researchers in conducting data screening and preliminary analysis.