Cronbach’s Alpha

Temilade Adefioye
Content
 Brief overview and use
 Values of Cronbach’s Alpha
 Formula
 Example
Brief Overview and use
 It was developed in 1951 by Cronbach
Lee to meet the need of finding an
objective way of measuring the internal
consistency reliability of an instrument
used in a research work (Cronbach, 1951,
p.297)
 It is mostly used when the research being
carried out has multiple-item measures of
a concept (Tavakol and Dennick, 2011,
p.53; How2Statsa, 2015)
Values of Cronbach’s Alpha
 It is usually expressed as a number between .00 and
1.0 (Tavakol and Dennick, 2011, p.53; How2Statsa,
2015)
 A value of .00 means no consistency in measurement
while a value of 1.0 indicates perfect consistency in
measurement (How2Statsb, 2015).
 The acceptable range is between 0.70 and 0.90 or
higher depending on the type of research
(How2Statsc, 2015)
 0.70 is acceptable for exploratory research while 0.80
and 0.90 are acceptable for basic research and applied
scenarios respectively (How2Statsc, 2015)
Values of Cronbach’s Alpha (contd)
 The number of items used in a scale
usually affects the estimated reliability
(How2Statsb, 2015)
 A low value (e.g. <0.5) could be as a
result of factors such as a low number of
questions or poor interrelatedness
between items, while a high value of alpha
(e.g. >0.90), may be as a result of some
redundant items in the instrument
(Tavakol and Dennick, 2011, p.54).
Formula
𝑘𝑟
 α=
(1+ 𝑘−1)𝑟
 Where k=number of indicators or number of
items
 𝑟 = mean inter-indicator correlation
 The value one gets for α usually indicates the
percentage of the reliable variance.
 For instance, if one gets a value of .70, it means
that 70% of the variance in the scores is reliable
variance, which means that 30% is error variance
(How2Statsb, 2015).
Example
Item 1 Item 2 Item 3 Item 4 Item 5

Item 1 1.0
Item 2 .35 1.0
Item 3 .42 .31 1.0
Item 4 .25 .38 .41 1.0
Item 5 .21 .36 .46 .31 1.0

 From the table above, we have a 5 item

scale showing data collected from 100
respondents
 The α will be calculated using the formula
𝑘𝑟
α=
(1+ 𝑘−1)𝑟
 where k =5 and 𝑟 = .346
Example (Cont’d)
 Substituting the terms, we have:
5(.346) 1.73
 α= = = .73
(1+ 5−1).346 2.384
 This means that the 73% of the variance
in the data is reliable variance.
End
 Comments?
 Questions?
 Observations?
References
 CRONBACH, L. (1951). Coefficient alpha and the internal structure
of tests. Psychometrika. 16(3), pp.297-334
 TAVAKOL, M. & DENNICK, R. (2011). Making sense of Cronbach’s
alpha. International journal of Medical Education, 2, pp.53-55
 HOW2STATSa (2015) What is Cronbach’s alpha? [online film]
Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCztXEfNJLM
[Accessed 11/09/15].
 HOW2STATSb (2015) What is Cronbach’s alpha?-Explained Simply
(Part 2) [online film] Available from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdCdTzpZrVI [Accessed
11/09/15].
 HOW2STATSc (2015) What is Cronbach’s alpha?-Explained Simply
(Part 3) [online film] Available from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdjBSJmtepA [Accessed
11/09/15].