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17 - Unreliable Reliability: The Problem of Cronbach’s Alpha

from Part II - How to Use Statistics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2019

Paul Cairns
Paul Cairns
Affiliation:
University of York
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Summary

Cronbach's alpha is often used as a key measure of reliability in questionnaires developed in HCI. However, the state-of-the-art literature on Cronbach's alpha shows that it is itself not a reliable measure. This chapter demonstrates the problems and leads to a more nuanced interpretation of reliability, using both Cronbach's alpha and other more modern alternatives.

Keywords

Factor analysisfactorquestionnaire developmentitemloadingsimple structurevalidationrecommended values
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Chapter
Information
Doing Better Statistics in Human-Computer Interaction , pp. 204 - 213
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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