If you are using a measurement scale in your dissertation, chances are that you have written about Cronbach’s alpha, or Coefficient alpha, in a section on reliability in your proposal or dissertation. Unfortunately, most students misapply the concept. I believe Cronbach’s alpha is one of the most misunderstood concepts in research involving measurement. There are …
In preparation for our upcoming webinar on Avoiding the Traps of Questionnaire Design and Analysis in Your Dissertation at 6 pm (GMT+2:00) on 19th September, I’m writing about an issue of reliability that is often problematic for students. An old bathroom scale explains the concept of reliability of the measurement instrument in your dissertation. Here …
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If you use an old bathroom scale to weigh yourself and step on and off it a few times, you’ll probably get different readings, even within seconds. These measurements of your weight (more correctly, your mass, but I’ll stay with weight) vary randomly. But they shouldn’t. Unfortunately, old bathroom scales produce weights that are not …
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You may wonder why my sympathy for Cronbach’s Alpha (also called Coefficient Alpha). Well, it’s because alpha is one of the most frequently misunderstood and misinterpreted statistics in theses, dissertations, proposals and other academic publications involving measurement 🥲. SO, WHAT IS CRONBACH’S ALPHA? Cronbach’s alpha is a measure of the internal consistency …
One aspect of research methodology that often confuses students is the topic of reliability. This is because there are really two main types of reliability: MEASUREMENT reliability and RESEARCH reliability. These two reliabilities are very different. Measurement reliability is all about assessing the reliability or consistency of the scores of your measurement instruments. These assessments …