Why we run cronbach’s alpha
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Cronbach's alpha is a measure of internal consistency, which is used to determine if the items in a survey or questionnaire reliably measure the same concept. It ranges from 0 to 1, with higher numbers indicating greater reliability. An acceptable alpha is between 0.7-0.95. Cronbach's alpha measures how well items correlate with each other and with the total test. It is reported along with the mean to indicate the reliability of a scale. The reliability statistics table in SPSS shows the actual alpha value and whether removing any items would increase or decrease the value.
![• In a case where the [internal consistency]
reliability is somewhat low, you may still
want to sum the scores (count/frequency)](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/whyweruncronbachsalpha-140325044944-phpapp01/85/Why-we-run-cronbach-s-alpha-11-320.jpg)
Why we run cronbach’s alpha
- 1. Cronbach's Alpha (α) using SPSS Aiden Yeh Wenzao Ursuline University
- 2. Cronbach's alpha • the most common measure of internal consistency ("reliability"). • It is most commonly used when you have multiple Likert questions in a survey/questionnaire that form a scale and you wish to determine if the scale is reliable. • expressed as a number between 0 and 1.
- 3. • describes the extent to which all the items in a test measure the same concept or construct and hence it is connected to the inter-relatedness of the items within the test
- 4. • For example, if a test has a reliability of 0.80, there is 0.36 error variance (random error) in the scores (0.80×0.80 = 0.64; 1.00 – 0.64 = 0.36) • acceptable values of alpha, ranging from 0.70 to 0.95
- 5. • Internal consistency should be determined before a test can be employed for research or examination purposes to ensure validity • reliability estimates show the amount of measurement error in a test; this interpretation of reliability is the correlation of test with itself.
- 6. Example of reporting • In Table (Cronbach’s α = .80; m= 3.34)
- 7. The first important table is the Reliability Statistics table that provides the actual value for Cronbach's alpha
- 8. "Cronbach's Alpha if Item Deleted" • We can see that removal of any question, except question 8, would result in a lower Cronbach's alpha. Therefore, we would not want to remove these questions. Removal of question 8 would lead to a small improvement in Cronbach's alpha, and we can also see that the "Corrected Item-Total Correlation" value was low (0.128) for this item. This might lead us to consider whether we should remove this item.
- 9. • A low value of alpha could be due to a low number of questions, poor interrelatedness between items or heterogeneous constructs. • For example if a low alpha is due to poor correlation between items then some should be revised or discarded. • items with low correlations (approaching zero) are deleted.
- 10. • A reliability of .5 means that about half of the variance of the observed score is attributable to truth and half is attributable to error. • Low Cronbach's alpha also means that a group of people did not respond to that set of items consistently
- 11. • In a case where the [internal consistency] reliability is somewhat low, you may still want to sum the scores (count/frequency)
- 12. • See this very simple tutorial https://statistics.laerd.com/spss-tutorials/cronb
- 13. References • http://www.ijme.net/archive/2/cronbachs-alpha • https://statistics.laerd.com/spss-tutorials/cronb • http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/spss/faq/alpha.htm