Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Cronbach's alpha (Cronbach's ), also known as tau-equivalent reliability or coefficient alpha (coefficient ), is a reliability coefficient and a measure of the internal consistency of tests and measures. [1] [2] [3] It was named after the American psychologist Lee Cronbach.
Alpha is also a function of the number of items, so shorter scales will often have lower reliability estimates yet still be preferable in many situations because they are lower burden. An alternative way of thinking about internal consistency is that it is the extent to which all of the items of a test measure the same latent variable .
It is a special case of Cronbach's α, computed for dichotomous scores. [2] [3] It is often claimed that a high KR-20 coefficient (e.g., > 0.90) indicates a homogeneous test. However, like Cronbach's α, homogeneity (that is, unidimensionality) is actually an assumption, not a conclusion, of reliability coefficients.
Unfortunately, there is no way to directly observe or calculate the true score, so a variety of methods are used to estimate the reliability of a test. Some examples of the methods to estimate reliability include test-retest reliability, internal consistency reliability, and parallel-test reliability. Each method comes at the problem of ...
Cronbach's can be shown to provide a lower bound for reliability under rather mild assumptions. [citation needed] Thus, the reliability of test scores in a population is always higher than the value of Cronbach's in that population. Thus, this method is empirically feasible and, as a result, it is very popular among researchers.
For the reliability of a two-item test, the formula is more appropriate than Cronbach's alpha (used in this way, the Spearman-Brown formula is also called "standardized Cronbach's alpha", as it is the same as Cronbach's alpha computed using the average item intercorrelation and unit-item variance, rather than the average item covariance and ...
Holistic scoring is often validated by its outcomes. Consistency among rater scores, or "rater reliability," has been computed by at least eight different formulas, among them percentage of agreement, Pearson's r correlation coefficient, the Spearman-Brown formula, Cronbach's alpha, and quadratic weighted kappa.
Cronbach's α or Cronbach's &_alpha; (without the underscore is contrary to the ASCII norm of the English Wikipedia headings, so this is now Cronbach's alpha--Henrygb 00:36, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC) I realise it's what comes through from a template, but it seems to me misleading to say that the title "Cronbach's alpha" is "wrong".