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Cronbach Alpha

Cronbach's alpha is a measure of internal consistency, which is used to gauge how closely related a set of items are as a group. It is calculated on a scale between 0 and 1, with a higher value indicating the items measure an underlying construct. The document provides an example of calculating Cronbach's alpha for a set of questions measuring employee enthusiasm, finding a high value of 0.823 indicating good internal consistency among the items.

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162 views

Cronbach Alpha

Cronbach's alpha is a measure of internal consistency, which is used to gauge how closely related a set of items are as a group. It is calculated on a scale between 0 and 1, with a higher value indicating the items measure an underlying construct. The document provides an example of calculating Cronbach's alpha for a set of questions measuring employee enthusiasm, finding a high value of 0.823 indicating good internal consistency among the items.

Uploaded by

omelkhair amen
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Cronbach alpha

Cronbach alpha
• Cronbach's alpha coefficient (also known as the coefficient alpha
technique or alpha coefficient of reliability) is a test of reliability as internal
consistency (Cronbach, 1951).
• Cronbach alpha is also used to measure split-half reliability. However,
rather than simply examining two sets of scores; that is, computing the
split-half reliability on the measurement procedure only once, Cronbach's
alpha does this for each measure/item within a measurement procedure
(e.g., every question within a survey). Therefore, Cronbach's alpha
examines the scores between each measure/item and the sum of all the
other relevant measures/items you are interested in. This provides us with
a coefficient of inter-item correlations, where a strong relationship
between the measures/items within the measurement procedure suggests
high internal consistency (e.g., a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of .80).
Terminologies
• When approaching Cronbach's alpha in SPSS Statistics, you should be familiar
with the different terms used in SPSS to describe your data. The first, and most
important, is that SPSS Statistics will refer to your variables as items, not
variables. Thus, each variable is called an item. When each item is grouped
together, it is referred to as a scale.
• A questionnaire can contain multiple scales. These scales are used most often to
determine an average or summated score that represents this underlying
construct. For example, higher scores might indicate a greater 'amount' of this
construct. Sometimes these constructs are referred to as dimensions. Although
Cronbach's alpha tries to determine how well a set of questions are 'grouped
together', it cannot determine whether the items it is analysing consist of a single
dimension or multiple dimensions. You would consider running a Cronbach's
alpha on each dimension.
• Some questions (e.g., some questions that are negatively worded), need to
be reverse coded in order to maintain consistency.
Example
• A questionnaire was developed that intended to determine employee
motivation, dependability, enthusiasm and commitment. A total of
315 potential employees completed the questionnaire. As part of the
principal components analysis, it was established that
questions Qu20, Qu21, Qu22, Qu23, Qu24 and Qu25 were likely
measuring the underlying construct, 'enthusiasm'. However, the
company director now wanted to establish the reliability of these
questions in measuring 'enthusiasm'.
Set-up Data
Procedure
6. Then, click Continue and Click OK.
Output Tables

• In this example, Cronbach's alpha (α) is 0.823, which


indicates a high level of internal consistency for our
scale. Higher values of Cronbach's alpha are better.

Notice that this is not the average of the mean score for each
item, but for the scale as a whole. If there are an equal number
of valid cases for each item, this scale average will be the sum
of the average of each item (as discovered in the Item
Statistics table). All the statistics presented so far assume that
all items that contribute to the scale are suitable to do so.
Output table

You can see from the "Cronbach's Alpha if Item The "Corrected Item-Total Correlation" is the Pearson
Deleted" column, as highlighted below, how the correlation between the specific item and the sum of all the
calculated Cronbach's alpha value would change other items. If the items are all measuring the same underlying
when each specific item is removed from the scale. construct, you would expect this correlation coefficient to be
relatively high. Pearson correlation coefficients lower than 0.3
are cause for concern because it is an indication that this
Note: The value you get for the "Cronbach's Alpha particular item might not be measuring the same construct, and
if Item Deleted" column is the value if that you might consider removing them from the analysis.
item and only that item is deleted
The squared multiple correlation ("Squared Multiple
Correlation" column) is the R2 value in a multiple regression
with the dependent variable as the specific item and the
predictors as the other items. The reasoning is that if the items
are measuring the same latent construct, the items should be
able to explain the variation in the other items.
Reporting
• A questionnaire was employed to measure different, underlying
constructs. One construct, 'enthusiasm', consisted of six
questions. The scale had a high level of internal consistency, as
determined by a Cronbach's alpha of 0.823.

Note: Cronbach's alpha simply provides you with an overall reliability coefficient for a set of variables (e.g.,
questions). If your questions reflect different underlying personal qualities (or other dimensions), for example,
employee motivation and employee commitment, Cronbach's alpha will not be able to distinguish between these.
In order to do this and then check their reliability (using Cronbach's alpha), you will first need to run a test such as
a principal components analysis (PCA).

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