From alpha to omega: A practical solution to the pervasive problem of internal consistency estimation

British Journal of Psychology

Volumn 105, Issue 3, 2014, Pages 399-412

  Dunn, Thomas J ^a   Baguley, Thom ^a   Brunsden, Vivienne ^a  

^a NOTTINGHAM TRENT UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HUMAN; PROCEDURES; PSYCHOMETRY; REPRODUCIBILITY; STANDARDS; STATISTICAL ANALYSIS;

DATA INTERPRETATION, STATISTICAL; HUMANS; PSYCHOMETRICS; REPRODUCIBILITY OF RESULTS;

EID: 84904050392     PISSN: 00071269     EISSN: 20448295     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12046     Document Type: Article

References (50)

1. Aiken, L. S., West, S. G., & Millsap, R. E. (2008). Doctoral training in statistics, measurement, and methodology in psychology - replication and extension of Aiken, West, Sechrest and Reno's (1990) survey of PhD programs in North America. American Psychologist, 63, 32-50. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.63.1.32
2. Aiken, L. S., West, S. G., Sechrest, L., Reno, R. R., Roediger, H. L., Scarr, S., & Sherman, S. J. (1990). Graduate training in statistics, methodology, and - a survey of PhD programs in North America. American Psychologist, 45, 721-734. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.45.6.721
3. Baguley, T. (2008). The perils of statistics by numbers. The Psychologist, 21, 224-224.
4. Baguley, T. (2009). Standardized or simple effect size: What should be reported? British Journal of Psychology, 100, 603-617. doi:10.1348/000712608X377117
5. Baguley, T. (2012). Serious stats: A guide to advanced statistics for the behavioral sciences. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave.
6. Cortina, J. M. (1993). What is coefficient alpha? An examination of theory and applications. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 98-104. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.78.1.98
7. Cronbach, L. J. (1951). Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests. Psychometrika, 16, 297-334. doi:10.1007/BF02310555
8. Cronbach, L. J., & Shavelson, R. J. (2004). My current thoughts on coefficient alpha and successor procedures. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 64, 391-418. doi:10.1177/0013164404266386
9. DiCiccio, T. J., & Efron, B. (1996). Bootstrap confidence intervals. Statistical Science, 11, 189-228. doi:10.1002/sim.4134
10. Dunn, J. T., & Castro, A. (2012). Postmodern society and the individual: The structural characteristics of postmodern society and how they shape who we think we are. The Social Science Journal, 49, 352-358. doi:10.1016/j.soscij.2012.02.001
11. Field, A., Miles, J. N. V., & Field, Z. (2012). Discovering statistics using R. London, UK: Sage.
12. Graham, J. M. (2006). Congeneric and (essentially) tau-equivalent estimates of score reliability - What they are and how to use them. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 66, 930-944. doi:10.1177/0013164406288165
13. Green, S. B., & Hershberger, S. L. (2000). Correlated errors in true score models and their effect on coefficient alpha. Structural Equation Modeling, 7, 251-270. doi:10.1207/S15328007SEM0702_6
14. Green, S., Lissitz, R., & Mulaik, S. (1977). Limitations of coefficient alpha as an index of test unidimensionality. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 37, 827-838. doi:10.1177/001316447703700403
15. Green, S. B., & Yang, Y. (2009). Commentary on coefficient alpha: A cautionary tale. Psychometrika, 74, 121-135. doi:10.1007/s11336-008-9098-4
16. Hogan, T. P., Benjamin, A., & Brezinski, K. L. (2000). Reliability methods: a note on the frequency of use of various types. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 60, 523-531. doi:10.1177/00131640021970691
17. Huysamen, G. (2007). Coefficient alpha: Unnecessarily ambiguous; unduly ubiquitous. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology, 32, 34-40. Retrieved from http://sajip.co.za/index.php/sajip/article/view/242
18. Iacobucci, D., & Duhachek, A. (2003). Advancing alpha: Measuring reliability with confidence. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 13, 478-487. doi:10.1207/S15327663JCP1304_14
19. Jöreskog, K. G. (1971). Statistical analysis of sets of congeneric tests. Psychometrika, 36, 109-133. doi:10.1007/BF02291393
20. Kelley, K., & Cheng, Y. (2012). Estimation and confidence interval formation for reliability coefficients of homogeneous measurement instruments. Methodology, 8, 39-50. doi:10.1027/1614-2241/a000036
21. Kelley, K., & Lai, K. (2012). MBESS: MBESS. R package version 3.3.2. Retrieved from http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=MBESS
22. Kelley, K., & Preacher, K. J. (2012). On effect size. Psychological Methods, 17, 137-152. doi:10.1037/a0028086
23. Kristof, W. (1964). Testing differences between reliability coefficients. British Journal of Statistical Psychology, 17, 105-111. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8317.1964.tb00253
24. Lord, F. I., & Novick, M. R. (1968). Statistical theories of mental test scores. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley.
25. McDonald, R. (1981). The dimensionality of tests and items. British Journal of Mathematical & Statistical Psychology, 34, 100-117. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8317.1981.tb00621.x
26. McDonald, R. P. (1999). Test theory: A unified treatment. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
27. Miller, M. B. (1995). Coefficient alpha: A basic introduction from the perspectives of classical test theory and structural equation modeling. Structural Equation Modeling, 2, 255-273. doi:10.1080/10705519509540013
28. Nunnally, B. H., & Bernstein, J.C. (1994). Psychometric theory (3rd ed.). London, UK: McGraw-Hill.
29. R Development Core Team. (2012). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria. Retrieved from http://www.R-project.org/
30. Raykov, T. (1997a). Estimation of composite reliability for congeneric measures. Applied Psychological Measurement, 21, 173-184. doi:10.1177/01466216970212006
31. Raykov, T. (1997b). Scale reliability, Cronbach's coefficient alpha, and violations of essential tau-equivalence with fixed congeneric components. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 32, 329-353. doi:10.1177/01466216970212006
32. Raykov, T. (1998). Coefficient alpha and composite reliability with interrelated nonhomogeneous items. Applied Psychological Measurement, 22, 375-385. doi:10.1177/014662169802200407
33. Raykov, T. (2002). Analytic estimation of standard error and confidence interval for scale reliability. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 37, 89-103. doi:10.1207/s15327906mbr3204_2
34. Raykov, T. (2007). Reliability if deleted, not 'alpha if deleted': evaluation of scale reliability following component deletion. The British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, 60, 201-216. doi:10.1348/000711006X115954
35. Revelle, W., & Zinbarg, R. E. (2009). Coefficients alpha, beta, omega, and the glb: Comments on Sijtsma. Psychometrika, 74, 145-154. doi:10.1007/s11336-008-9102-z
36. Rizopoulos (2012). ltm. R package version 0.9-9. Retrieved from http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ltm
37. Shevlin, M., Miles, J. N. V., Davies, M. N. O., & Walker, S. (2000). Coefficient alpha: A useful indicator of reliability? Personality and Individual Differences, 28, 229-237. doi:10.1016/S0191-8869(99)00093-8
38. Sijtsma, K. (2009). On the use, the misuse, and the very limited usefulness of Cronbach's alpha. Psychometrika, 74, 107-120. doi:10.1007/s11336-008-9101-0
39. Soĉan, G. (2000). Assessment of reliability when test items are not essentially tau-equivalent. Advances in Methodology and Statistics, 15, 23-35. Retrieved from http://ams.sisplet.org/uploadi/editor/mz15socan.pdf
40. Terry, L., & Kelley, K. (2012). Sample size planning for composite reliability coefficients: Accuracy in parameter estimation via narrow confidence intervals. British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, 65, 371-401. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8317.2011.02030.x
41. Thompson, B. (2002). "Statistical", "practical", and "clinical": How many kinds of significance do counselors need to consider? Journal of Counseling and Development, 80, 64-71. doi:10.1177/0013164400602002
42. Thompson, B., & Vacha-Haase, T. (2000). Psychometrics is datametrics: The test is not reliable. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 60, 174-195. doi:10.1002/j.1556-6678.2002.tb00167.x
43. Waller, N. G. (2008). Commingled samples: A neglected source of bias in reliability analysis. Applied Psychological Measurement, 32, 211-223. doi:10.1177/0146621607300860
44. Wilkinson, L., & APA Task Force on Statistical Inference. (1999). Statistical methods in psychology journals: Guidelines and explanations. American Psychologist, 5, 594-604. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.54.8.594
45. Yang, Y., & Green, S. B. (2011). Coefficient alpha: A reliability coefficient for the 21st century?. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 29, 377-392. doi:10.1177/0734282911406668
46. Yuan, K., & Bentler, P. M. (2002). On robustness of the normal-theory based asymptotic distributions of three reliability coefficient estimates. Psychometrika, 67, 251-259. doi:10.1007/BF02294845
47. Zimmerman, D., Zumbo, B., & Lalonde, C. (1993). Coefficient alpha as an estimate of test reliability under violation of two assumptions. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 53, 33-49. doi:10.1177/0013164493053001003
48. η for structures containing two group factors: Perils and prospects. Applied Psychological Measurement, 31, 135-157. doi:10.1177/0146621606291558
49. η: Their relations with each other and two alternative conceptualizations of reliability. Psychometrika, 70, 123-133. doi:10.1007/s11336-003-0974-7
50. η. Applied Psychological Measurement, 30, 121-144. doi:10.1177/0146621605278814