Journal ArticleDOI
What Is Coefficient Alpha? An Examination of Theory and Applications
TLDR
A review of the Social Sciences Citations Index for the literature from 1966 to 1990 revealed that Cronbach's (1951) article had been cited approximately 60 times per year and in a total of 278 different journals.Abstract:
Coefficient alpha (Cronbach, 1951) is certainly one of the most important and pervasive statistics in research involving test construction and use. A review of the Social Sciences Citations Index for the literature from 1966 to 1990 revealed that Cronbach's (1951) article had been cited approximately 60 times per year and in a total of 278 different journals. In addition to the areas of psychology in which one may expect to see alpha used, such as educational, industrial, social, clinical, child, community, and abnormal psychology, this list of journals included representatives from experimental psychology, sociology, statistics, medicine, counseling, nursing, economics, political science, criminology, gerontology, broadcasting, anthropology, and accounting. In spite of its widespread use, however, there is some confusion as to the true meaning and proper interpretation of the statistic. In this article I address this confusion in two ways. First, a theoretical discussion of alpha is presented. This includes some of the many statements that have been made about alpha and an attempt to integrate these statements. Second, I take a more practical approach in which the interpretation of alpha is examined by observing the changes in alpha as the number of items and interitem correlations are manipulated.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Making sense of Cronbach's alpha
Mohsen Tavakol,Reg Dennick +1 more
TL;DR: The meaning of Cronbach’s alpha, the most widely used objective measure of reliability, is explained and the underlying assumptions behind alpha are explained in order to promote its more effective use.
Journal ArticleDOI
Constructing validity: Basic issues in objective scale development
Lee Anna Clark,David Watson +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss theoretical principles, practical issues, and pragmatic decisions to help developers maximize the construct validity of scales and subscales, and propose factor analysis as a crucial role in ensuring unidimensionality and discriminant validity.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Use of Cronbach’s Alpha When Developing and Reporting Research Instruments in Science Education
TL;DR: Cronbach's alpha is a statistic commonly quoted by authors to demonstrate that tests and scales that have been constructed or adopted for research projects are fit for purpose as discussed by the authors, which is a measure of reliability.
Journal ArticleDOI
Development and validation of work–family conflict and family–work conflict scales.
TL;DR: This paper developed and validated short, self-report scales of work-family conflict (WFC) and family-work conflict (FWC) using conceptualizations consistent with the current literature.
Report SeriesDOI
Handbook on Constructing Composite Indicators: Methodology and User Guide
Michela Nardo,Michaela Saisana,Andrea Saltelli,Stefano Tarantola,Anders Hoffman,Enrico Giovannini +5 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a handbook for constructing and using composite indicators for policy makers, academics, the media and other interested parties, which is concerned with those which compare and rank country performance in areas such as industrial competitiveness, sustainable development, globalisation and innovation.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests.
TL;DR: In this paper, a general formula (α) of which a special case is the Kuder-Richardson coefficient of equivalence is shown to be the mean of all split-half coefficients resulting from different splittings of a test, therefore an estimate of the correlation between two random samples of items from a universe of items like those in the test.
Book
Statistical Theories of Mental Test Scores
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a survey of test theory models and their application in the field of mental test analysis. But the focus of the survey is on test-score theories and models, and not the practical applications and limitations of each model studied.
Book
Introduction to Measurement Theory
TL;DR: A review of basic statistical concepts for test construction is given in this paper, with a focus on the use of latent-trait models for measuring test scores, and a discussion of current developments in measurement.