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What is coefficient alpha? An examination of theory and applications
Abstract
Psychological research involving scale construction has been hindered considerably by a wide-spread lack of understanding of coefficient alpha and reliability theory in general. A discussion of the assumptions and meaning of coefficient alpha is presented. This discussion is followed by a demonstration of the effects of test length and dimensionality on alpha by calculating the statistic for hypothetical tests with varying numbers of items, numbers of orthogonal dimensions, and average item intercorrelations. Recommendations for the proper use of coefficient alpha are of-fered. Coefficient alpha (Cronbach, 1951) is certainly one of the most important and pervasive statistics in research involving test construction and use. A review of the Social Sciences Cita-tions Index for the literature from 1966 to 1990 revealed that Cronbach's (1951) article had been cited approximately 60 times per year and in a total of 278 different journals. In addi-tion to the areas of psychology in which one may expect to see alpha used, such as educational, industrial, social, clinical, child, community, and abnormal psychology, this list of jour-nals included representatives from experimental psychology, so-ciology, statistics, medicine, counseling, nursing, economics,
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“The reliability of each scale was tested with the Cronbach's Alpha: all the values are over 0.7, which implies that there is an overall adequate internal consistency and that the measures could be considered reliable (Cortina, 1993;Taber, 2017).”
From The self-reinforcing effect of digital and social exclusion: The inequality loop (2022) · cites this paper as Cortina, 1993
In the citing paper
“Internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) ranged from 0.70 to 0.79, which is within what is generally considered the acceptable range of 0.65–0.80 [47,48]”
From Gender Differences in Coping and Psychological Adaptation during the COVID-19 Pandemic (2023) · cites this paper as [47]
In the citing paper
“We chose these two tools, instead of traditional measures of internal consistency (i.e., Cronbach's Alpha [Cronbach, 1951] or KR-20 for dichotomous data [Kuder and Richardson, 1937]) because unlike traditional estimates which do not assess homogeneity (Cortina, 1993; Clark and Watson, 1995), omega and CFA, simultaneously provide estimates of both.”
From A psychometric analysis of the reading the mind in the eyes test: toward a brief form for research and applied settings (2015) · cites this paper as Cortina, 1993
In the citing paper
“Also, Cronbach's alpha is highly biased by long tests; Cortina (1993) recommended Cronbach's alpha not be used for tests with more than 40 items and the Eyes Test, at 36 items, is close to this limit.”
From A psychometric analysis of the reading the mind in the eyes test: toward a brief form for research and applied settings (2015) · cites this paper as Cortina, 1993
In the citing paper
“Reliability estimates are biased towards number of items, and on scales with small numbers of items the alpha is a poor indicator of measure fit (Cortina 1993).”
From Sleep Problems Across Development: A Pathway to Adolescent Risk Taking Through Working Memory (2015) · cites this paper as Cortina 1993
Citations
Cites
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
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Tavakol, M., & Dennick, R. (2011) · International Journal of Medical Education · doi:10.5116/ijme.4dfb.8dfd · Cited by 15,126
The Use of Cronbach’s Alpha When Developing and Reporting Research Instruments in Science Education
Taber, K. S. (2018) · Research in Science Education · doi:10.1007/s11165-016-9602-2 · Cited by 10,679
“Cronbach ’ s alpha has been described as ‘ one of the most important and pervasive statistics in research involving test construction and use ’ (Cortina, 1993, p. 98) to the extent that its use in research with multiple-item measurements is considered routine (Schmitt, 1996, p. 350).”
BackgroundInfluentialConstructing validity: Basic issues in objective scale development.
Clark, L. A., & Watson, D. (1995) · Psychological Assessment · doi:10.1037/1040-3590.7.3.309 · Cited by 6,567
Mokkink, L. B., Terwee, C. B., Patrick, D. L., Alonso, J., Stratford, P. W., Knol, D. L., Bouter, L. M., & de Vet, H. C. W. (2010) · Journal of Clinical Epidemiology · doi:10.1016/j.jclinepi.2010.02.006 · Cited by 4,465
“According to these sources, homogeneity of the items refers to the unidimensionality of a scale [11] and is a prerequisite for a clear interpretation of the internal consistency statistic [8,11].”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialHandbook on Constructing Composite Indicators: Methodology and User Guide
OECD, Union, E., & Joint Research Centre - European Commission (2008) · doi:10.1787/9789264043466-en · Cited by 3,960
Development and validation of work–family conflict and family–work conflict scales
Netemeyer, R. G., Boles, J. S., & McMurrian, R. (1996) · Journal of Applied Psychology · doi:10.1037/0021-9010.81.4.400 · Cited by 3,864
“For example, Cortina (1993) and Podsakoff and MacKenzie (1994) noted the importance of taking the number of scale items into consideration when evaluating what constitutes adequate levels of coefficient alpha.”
BackgroundMethodStarting at the beginning: an introduction to coefficient alpha and internal consistency
Streiner, D. L. (2003) · Journal of Personality Assessment · doi:10.1207/s15327752jpa8001_18 · Cited by 3,794
“For example, Cortina (1993) demonstrated that a six-item scale with an average item correlation of .30 has a value of α of .72.”
BackgroundMethodDunn, T. J., Baguley, T. S., & Brunsden, V. (2013) · British Journal of Psychology · doi:10.1111/bjop.12046 · Cited by 3,766
“Other authors have shown that estimation of reliability of alpha can also be inflated when the errors for each item are correlated or the number of items is significantly increased (Cortina, 1993; Yuan & Bentler, 2002).”
BackgroundCOSMIN guideline for systematic reviews of patient-reported outcome measures
Prinsen, C. A. C., Mokkink, L. B., Bouter, L. M., Alonso, J., Patrick, D. L., de Vet, H. C. W., & Terwee, C. B. (2018) · Quality of Life Research · doi:10.1007/s11136-018-1798-3 · Cited by 3,345
“Evaluate internal consistency Internal consistency refers to the degree of interrelatedness among the items and is often assessed by Cronbach’s alpha [30, 33].”
MethodA Brief Tutorial on the Development of Measures for Use in Survey Questionnaires
Hinkin, T. R. (1998) · Organizational Research Methods · doi:10.1177/109442819800100106 · Cited by 4,095
“Cortina (1993) found that scales with many items may have high internal consistency reliabilities even if item intercorrelations are low, an argument in favor of shorter scales with high internal consistency.”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialMacKenzie, S. B., Podsakoff, P. M., & Podsakoff, N. P. (2011) · MIS Quarterly · doi:10.2307/23044045 · Cited by 3,165
“However, it is widely known that alpha increases as the number of measures increases, so a higher value may be appropriate in cases where the number of measures is large (Cortina 1993).”
BackgroundA Meta-Analysis of Cronbach's Coefficient Alpha
Peterson, R. A. (1994) · Journal of Consumer Research · doi:10.1086/209405 · Cited by 3,028
Meta-Analytic review of leader–member exchange theory: Correlates and construct issues.
Gerstner, C. R., & Day, D. V. (1997) · Journal of Applied Psychology · doi:10.1037/0021-9010.82.6.827 · Cited by 3,005
On the use, the misuse, and the very limited usefulness of Cronbach’s alpha
Sijtsma, K. (2009) · Psychometrika · doi:10.1007/s11336-008-9101-0 · Cited by 2,814
“Moreover, alpha depends on the number of items J , and our examples can be adapted simply to show that alpha grows as J grows (Cortina, 1993; Green et al., 1977).”
BackgroundInfluentialHandbook on Constructing Composite Indicators
Nardo, M., Saisana, M., Saltelli, A., Tarantola, S., Hoffmann, A. N., & Giovannini, E. (2005) · OECD statistics working papers · doi:10.1787/533411815016 · Cited by 2,874
“Cronbach Coefficient Alpha The Cronbach Coefficient Alpha (henceforth c-alpha) (Cronbach, 1951) is the most common estimate of internal consistency of items in a model or survey – Reliability/Item Analysis (e.g. Boscarino et al., 2004; Raykov, 1998; Cortina, 1993; Feldt et al., 1987; Green et al., 1977; Hattie, 1985;…”
MethodThe Predictive Validity of Multiple-Item versus Single-Item Measures of the Same Constructs
Bergkvist, L., & Rossiter, J. R. (2007) · Journal of Marketing Research · doi:10.1509/jmkr.44.2.175 · Cited by 3,107
Use Omega Rather than Cronbach’s Alpha for Estimating Reliability. But…
Hayes, A. F., & Coutts, J. J. (2020) · Communication Methods and Measures · doi:10.1080/19312458.2020.1718629 · Cited by 2,675
“Cronbach’s 1951 Psychometrika paper has been cited more than some of the most influential research in the sciences (Dunn et al., 2014; Sijtsma, 2009), and Cronbach’s α is the dominant measure of reliability reported in studies that rely on a MIMS. For example, Flake, Pek, and Hehman (2017) found that when a MIMS was u…”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialValidation of a New General Self-Efficacy Scale
Chen, G., Gully, S. M., & Eden, D. (2001) · Organizational Research Methods · doi:10.1177/109442810141004 · Cited by 3,542
“As Cortina (1993) has shown, high internal consistency reliability does not necessarily imply factorial unidimensionality.”
BackgroundThanks coefficient alpha, we’ll take it from here.
McNeish, D. (2018) · Psychological Methods · doi:10.1037/met0000144 · Cited by 2,533
The Work and Social Adjustment Scale: a simple measure of impairment in functioning
Mundt, J. C., Marks, I. M., Shear, M. K., & Greist, J. M. (2002) · British Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1192/bjp.180.5.461 · Cited by 2,515
The C-OAR-SE procedure for scale development in marketing
Rossiter, J. R. (2002) · International Journal of Research in Marketing · doi:10.1016/s0167-8116(02)00097-6 · Cited by 2,478
COSMIN Risk of Bias checklist for systematic reviews of Patient-Reported Outcome Measures
Mokkink, L. B., de Vet, H. C. W., Prinsen, C. A. C., Patrick, D. L., Alonso, J., Bouter, L. M., & Terwee, C. B. (2018) · Quality of Life Research · doi:10.1007/s11136-017-1765-4 · Cited by 2,479
“For example, Cronbach’s alpha can only be interpreted as a measure of internal consistency when the scale or subscale is unidimensional [18].”
BackgroundConstruction and Initial Validation of a Multidimensional Measure of Work–Family Conflict
Carlson, D. S., Kacmar, K. M., & Williams, L. J. (2000) · Journal of Vocational Behavior · doi:10.1006/jvbe.1999.1713 · Cited by 2,689
“To do this, scale development procedures which are described in the psychometric literature were followed (i.e., Bagozzi & Yi, 1988; Cortina, 1993; DeVillis, 1991; Schriesheim, Powers, Scandura, Gardiner, & Lankau, 1993).”
MethodTerwee, C. B., Prinsen, C. A. C., Chiarotto, A., Westerman, M. J., Patrick, D. L., Alonso, J., Bouter, L. M., de Vet, H. C. W., & Mokkink, L. B. (2018) · Quality of Life Research · doi:10.1007/s11136-018-1829-0 · Cited by 2,348
“A high Cronbach’s alpha is no guarantee that the construct of interest is being measured or that no important concepts are missing [10, 11], and a high test–retest reliability or responsiveness does not imply that all items are relevant and that no important concepts are missing.”
BackgroundUses and abuses of coefficient alpha
Schmitt, N. (1996) · Psychological Assessment · doi:10.1037/1040-3590.8.4.350 · Cited by 2,588
“Cortina (1993) suggested that in addition to reporting alpha, researchers also report what Cortina called the precision of alpha or what he called the standard error of alpha. This statistic reflects the spread of interitem correlations. This index will yield a value of 0 when all interitem correlations are zero and r…”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialThe effect of the performance appraisal system on trust for management: A field quasi-experiment.
Mayer, R. C., & Davis, J. H. (1999) · Journal of Applied Psychology · doi:10.1037/0021-9010.84.1.123 · Cited by 2,248
“As Cortina (1993) stated, "[alpha] must be interpreted with number of items in mind" (p.”
BackgroundCheung, G. W., Cooper-Thomas, H. D., Lau, R. S., & Wang, L. C. (2024) · Asia Pacific Journal of Management · doi:10.1007/s10490-023-09871-y · Cited by 2,262
“…of all indicators S , which can be decomposed into three terms (Cho, 2016, p. 28; Raykov & Marcoulides, 2012, p. 498): The last term on the right-hand side is the sum of the indicator variance not explained by the factors, usually referred to as residual variance or error variance (Cortina, 1993).”
An integrative model of organizational trust: past, present, and future
Schoorman, F. D., Mayer, R. C., & Davis, J. H. (2007) · Academy of Management Review · doi:10.5465/amr.2007.24348410 · Cited by 2,794
Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire
Bass, B. M., & Avolio, B. J. (1995) · PsycTESTS Dataset · doi:10.1037/t03624-000 · Cited by 2,019
The System Usability Scale: Past, Present, and Future
Lewis, J. R. (2018) · International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction · doi:10.1080/10447318.2018.1455307 · Cited by 1,958
“Reliability is an assessment of the consistency of a measurement, most commonly assessed with coefficient alpha (Cortina, 1993; Nunnally, 1978; Schmitt, 1996).”
BackgroundMokkink, L. B., Terwee, C. B., Knol, D. L., Stratford, P. W., Alonso, J., Patrick, D. L., Bouter, L. M., & de Vet, H. C. W. (2010) · BMC Medical Research Methodology · doi:10.1186/1471-2288-10-22 · Cited by 1,850
“Rather, unidimensionality of a scale is a prerequisite for a clear interpretation of the internal consistency statistics [6,7].”
BackgroundMeasuring Corporate Social Responsibility: A Scale Development Study
Türker, D. (2008) · Journal of Business Ethics · doi:10.1007/s10551-008-9780-6 · Cited by 1,842
“70, the decisions were taken based on the number of items, number of dimensions, and average inter-item correlations (Cortina, 1993).”
BackgroundInfluentialSkaalvik, E. M., & Skaalvik, S. (2011) · Teaching and Teacher Education · doi:10.1016/j.tate.2011.04.001 · Cited by 1,813
“70 are traditionally considered adequate (Cortina, 1993).”
Constructing validity: New developments in creating objective measuring instruments.
Clark, L. A., & Watson, D. (2019) · Psychological Assessment · doi:10.1037/pas0000626 · Cited by 1,470
“As a more specific guideline, we recommend that the AIC fall in the range of .15 to .50 (see Briggs & Cheek, 1986), with the scale’s optimal value determined by the generality versus specificity of the target construct.”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialUrsachi, G., Horodnic, I. A., & Zaiţ, A. (2015) · Procedia Economics and Finance · doi:10.1016/s2212-5671(15)00123-9 · Cited by 1,466
Detecting and Deterring Insufficient Effort Responding to Surveys
Huang, J. L. W., Curran, P. G., Keeney, J., Poposki, E. M., & DeShon, R. P. (2011) · Journal of Business and Psychology · doi:10.1007/s10869-011-9231-8 · Cited by 1,315
“We examined the impact of potential IER on two observed psychometric properties of scales: (a) facet-level item interrelatedness, indicated by Cronbach’s alpha (Cortina 1993); and (b) facet unidimensionality, indicated by the eigenvalues for the first and the second factor in exploratory factor analysis.”
MethodTools for Composite Indicators Building
Nardo, M., Saisana, M., Saltelli, A., & Tarantola, S. (2005) · Cited by 1,274
Carlson, D. S., Kacmar, K. M., Wayne, J. H., & Grzywacz, J. G. (2006) · Journal of Vocational Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2005.02.002 · Cited by 1,269
Gadermann, A., Guhn, M., & Zumbo, B. D. (2020) · PubMed · doi:10.7275/n560-j767 · Cited by 1,233
Reise, S. P., Moore, T. M., & Haviland, M. G. (2010) · Journal of Personality Assessment · doi:10.1080/00223891.2010.496477 · Cited by 1,196
“When data are multidimensional, Cronbach’s alpha can be very misleading in regard to interpreting how well a measure reflects a single construct (Cortina, 1993).”
BackgroundOn the relationship between coefficient alpha and composite reliability.
Peterson, R. A., & Kim, Y. (2012) · Journal of Applied Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0030767 · Cited by 1,142
The development and validation of the Workplace Ostracism Scale.
Ferris, D. L., Brown, D. J., Berry, J. W., & Lian, H. (2008) · Journal of Applied Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0012743 · Cited by 1,178
“Taken as a whole, the alphas, corrected item–total correlations, and interitem correlations indicated that the WOS possesses adequate internal reliability (Cortina, 1993).”
MethodHow Corporate Social Responsibility Influences Organizational Commitment
Türker, D. (2008) · Journal of Business Ethics · doi:10.1007/s10551-008-9993-8 · Cited by 1,057
Bech, P., Olsen, L. R., Kjoller, M., & Rasmussen, N. K. (2003) · International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research · doi:10.1002/mpr.145 · Cited by 1,015
“The number of items is lower than six, in both the WHO-Five and in the Mental Health subscale, so a coefficient alpha of 0.86 or higher has been considered adequate, although this is not a sufficient condition for homogeneity or unidimensionality (Cortina, 1993).”
MethodInfluentialValidity and Reliability in Social Science Research
Drost, E. A. (2011) · Education Research and Perspectives · doi:10.70953/erpv38.11005 · Cited by 982
“Coefficient alpha is useful for estimating reliability for item-specific variance in a unidimentional test (Cortina, 1993).”
BackgroundStatus Consumption in Consumer Behavior: Scale Development and Validation
Eastman, J. K., Goldsmith, R. E., & Flynn, L. R. (1999) · The Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice · doi:10.1080/10696679.1999.11501839 · Cited by 958
Burnout and engagement at work as a function of demands and control
Demerouti, E., Bakker, A. B., JONGE, J. D., Janssen, P. P. M., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2001) · Scandinavian Journal of Work Environment & Health · doi:10.5271/sjweh.615 · Cited by 1,011
“As can be seen from this table, all the scales had good internal consistency (30), and the pattern of correlations was as expected.”
ResultWhich factors affect entrepreneurial intention of university students?
Türker, D., & Selçuk, S. S. (2009) · Journal of European Industrial Training · doi:10.1108/03090590910939049 · Cited by 948
“70, the decisions were taken based on the number of items, number of dimensions, and average inter-item correlations (Cortina, 1993).”
BackgroundInfluentialTrizano-Hermosilla, Í., & Alvarado, J. M. (2016) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00769 · Cited by 986
Co-production and customer loyalty in financial services
Auh, S., Bell, S. J., McLeod, C. S., & Shih, E. C.-F. (2007) · Journal of Retailing · doi:10.1016/j.jretai.2007.03.001 · Cited by 960
High-Performance Work Systems and Occupational Safety.
Zacharatos, A., Barling, J. I., & Iverson, R. D. (2005) · Journal of Applied Psychology · doi:10.1037/0021-9010.90.1.77 · Cited by 925
A new instrument for measuring insight: the Beck Cognitive Insight Scale
Beck, A. T. (2003) · Schizophrenia Research · doi:10.1016/s0920-9964(03)00189-0 · Cited by 871
“Given that both of these subscales are composed of < 10 items, these levels of internal consistency were considered to be acceptable for research purposes (Cortina, 1993; Holden et al., 1991), even though both coefficient as were less than the 0.70 value recommended by Nunnally (1978).”
BackgroundInfluentialBest Practices in Exploratory Factor Analysis
Osborne, J. W., Costello, A. B., & Kellow, J. T. (2008) · Sage eBooks · doi:10.4135/9781412995627.d8 · Cited by 872
Rethinking Internal Consistency in Cronbach’s Alpha
Vaske, J. J., Beaman, J., & Sponarski, C. C. (2017) · Leisure Sciences · doi:10.1080/01490400.2015.1127189 · Cited by 856
“The unstandardized alpha should be in the range that has been recommended by others (see Cortina, 1993; DeVellis, 2003; Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994; Vaske, 2008).”
BackgroundInfluentialA Review on Sample Size Determination for Cronbach’s Alpha Test: A Simple Guide for Researchers
Bujang, M. A., Omar, E. D., & Baharum, N. (2018) · Malaysian Journal of Medical Sciences · doi:10.21315/mjms2018.25.6.9 · Cited by 896
Lai, C., & Hwang, G. (2016) · Computers & Education · doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2016.05.006 · Cited by 884
“Moreover, the KudereRichardson Formula 20 (KR-20) of the post-test was 0.58, indicating an acceptable internal consistency (Cortina, 1993).”
InfluentialTWO CRITERIA FOR GOOD MEASUREMENTS IN RESEARCH: VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY
Mohajan, H. K. (2017) · Annals of Spiru Haret University Economic Series · doi:10.26458/1746 · Cited by 1,057
“It can be represented in two main formats [Cortina, 1993]: i) The inter-item consistency, and ii) Split-half reliability.”
BackgroundDeveloping and investigating the use of single-item measures in organizational research.
Fisher, G. G., Matthews, R. A., & Gibbons, A. M. (2015) · Journal of Occupational Health Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0039139 · Cited by 794
“T hi s ar tic le is in te nd ed so le ly fo r th e pe rs on al us e of th e in di vi du al us er an d is no t to be di ss em in at ed br oa dl y. consistency increases with the length of a test (Cortina, 1993).”
The development and evaluation of a survey to measure user engagement
O'Brien, H. L., & Toms, E. G. (2009) · Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology · doi:10.1002/asi.21229 · Cited by 854
Cho, E., & Kim, S. (2014) · Organizational Research Methods · doi:10.1177/1094428114555994 · Cited by 812
“As Cortina (1993) noted and as our previous discussion suggests, alpha should be used for reliability estimation when the following conditions are met: (a) the test measures a single factor, (b) the test items are essentially tau-equivalent in statistical similarity, and (c) the error scores of the…”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialHuman Resources Practices as Predictors of Work‐Family Outcomes and Employee Turnover
Batt, R., & Valcour, P. M. (2003) · Industrial Relations A Journal of Economy and Society · doi:10.1111/1468-232x.00287 · Cited by 776
Gabriel, A. S., Podsakoff, N. P., Beal, D. J., Scott, B. A., Sonnentag, S., Trougakos, J. P., & Butts, M. M. (2019) · Organizational Research Methods · doi:10.1177/1094428118802626 · Cited by 755
“Given the long history of internal consistency reliability formulas (Cortina, 1993) and the expectations of editors and reviewers, it is not surprising that over 90% of the ESM studies we reviewed (see Question 2 for sample details) reported some form of internal consistency reliability for Level 1 measures, with the…”
BackgroundGrant, A. M., & Mayer, D. M. (2009) · Journal of Applied Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0013770 · Cited by 781
Testing the Dimensionality of Place Attachment in Recreational Settings
Kyle, G. T., Graefe, A. R., & Manning, R. E. (2005) · Environment and Behavior · doi:10.1177/0013916504269654 · Cited by 729
Servant leadership: Validation of a short form of the SL-28
Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Meuser, J. D., Hu, J., Wu, J., & Liao, C. (2015) · The Leadership Quarterly · doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2014.12.002 · Cited by 712
Construct Validation in Social and Personality Research
Flake, J. K., Pek, J. C. X., & Hehman, E. (2017) · Social Psychological and Personality Science · doi:10.1177/1948550617693063 · Cited by 715
“There are numerous demonstrations showing that a can be high even if the scale has multiple and completely orthogonal factors (Cortina, 1993; Schmitt, 1996).”
BackgroundA review and synthesis of situational strength in the organizational sciences
Meyer, R. D., Dalal, R. S., & Hermida, R. (2010) · Journal of Management · doi:10.1177/0149206309349309 · Cited by 692
“…possible, the term consistency is used similarly in psychometrics (i.e., internal consistency represents the extent to which items are interrelated; Cortina, 1993) and in personality (i.e., behavioral consistency represents the extent to which behaviors are similar across contexts; Funder &…”
BackgroundMeasuring Dimensions of Lesbian and Gay Male Experience
Mohr, J. J., & Fassinger, R. E. (2000) · Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development · doi:10.1080/07481756.2000.12068999 · Cited by 697
“These internal consistency estimates are low, probably because the constructs are multidimensional (Cortina, 1993).”
BackgroundTharenou, P., Donohue, R., & Cooper, B. K. (2007) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511810527 · Cited by 687
Best practice recommendations for data screening
DeSimone, J. A., Harms, P. D., & DeSimone, A. J. (2014) · Journal of Organizational Behavior · doi:10.1002/job.1962 · Cited by 690
“Also, the use of longer scales is associated with higher values for coefficient alpha (Cortina, 1993; Cronbach, 1951; Schmitt, 1996) and higher validities (Credé, Harms, Niehorster & Gaya-Valentine, 2012).”
BackgroundMartin, L. A., Neighbors, H. W., & Griffith, D. M. (2013) · JAMA Psychiatry · doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2013.1985 · Cited by 674
Neuburger, L., & Egger, R. (2020) · Current Issues in Tourism · doi:10.1080/13683500.2020.1803807 · Cited by 735
“The reliability test of Cronbach’s Alpha indicated that the values of the constructs travel risk perception and travel behaviour were greater than the required α>0.70 for scales with more than five items (Cortina, 1993).”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialAn item selection procedure to maximise scale reliability and validity
Raubenheimer, J. (2004) · SA Journal of Industrial Psychology · doi:10.4102/sajip.v30i4.168 · Cited by 667
Janßen, M., & Hamm, U. (2012) · Food Quality and Preference · doi:10.1016/j.foodqual.2011.12.004 · Cited by 705
Hobart, J., & Cano, S. (2009) · Health Technology Assessment · doi:10.3310/hta13120 · Cited by 621
Kyle, G. T., Graefe, A. R., Manning, R. E., & Bacon, J. (2004) · Journal of Environmental Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2003.12.006 · Cited by 629
“Cronbach’s alpha) of several factors was questionable, in light of Cortina’s (1983) 0.”
BackgroundKyle, G. T., Mowen, A. J., & Tarrant, M. A. (2004) · Journal of Environmental Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2004.11.001 · Cited by 617
“70 are acceptable, Cortina (1993) has indicated that with scales possessing a reduced number of items (e.”
BackgroundAtuahene‐Gima, K., & Murray, J. Y. (2007) · Journal of International Marketing · doi:10.1509/jimk.15.2.1 · Cited by 617
Whose Call to Answer: Institutional Complexity and Firms’ CSR Reporting
Luo, X. R., Wang, D., & Zhang, J. (2016) · Academy of Management Journal · doi:10.5465/amj.2014.0847 · Cited by 618
“7, indicating an acceptable level of reliability given the small number of measures (Cortina, 1993).”
BackgroundISSUES AND STRATEGIES FOR REDUCING THE LENGTH OF SELF‐REPORT SCALES
Stanton, J. M., Sinar, E. F., Balzer, W. K., & Smith, P. C. (2002) · Personnel Psychology · doi:10.1111/j.1744-6570.2002.tb00108.x · Cited by 608
Lumber, R., Richardson, M., & Sheffield, D. (2017) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0177186 · Cited by 588
Brief measures of sensation seeking for screening and large-scale surveys
Stephenson, M. T., Hoyle, R. H., Palmgreen, P., & Slater, M. D. (2003) · Drug and Alcohol Dependence · doi:10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2003.08.003 · Cited by 557
“Reflecting the moderate corrected item-total correlations among items within each index, the reliability of both indices is quite good despite their brevity (Cortina, 1993).”
BackgroundThe clinical significance of drug craving
Tiffany, S. T., & Wray, J. M. (2012) · Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.06298.x · Cited by 556
Ponterotto, J. G., & Ruckdeschel, D. E. (2007) · Perceptual and Motor Skills · doi:10.2466/pms.105.3.997-1014 · Cited by 555
Gámez, W., Chmielewski, M., Kotov, R., Ruggero, C., & Watson, D. (2011) · Psychological Assessment · doi:10.1037/a0023242 · Cited by 524
Modularity, strategic flexibility, and firm performance: a study of the home appliance industry
Worren, N., Moore, K., & Cardona, P. (2002) · Strategic Management Journal · doi:10.1002/smj.276 · Cited by 541
A Relational Perspective on Turnover: Examining Structural, Attitudinal, and Behavioral Predictors
Mossholder, K. W., Settoon, R. P., & Henagan, S. C. (2005) · Academy of Management Journal · doi:10.5465/amj.2005.17843941 · Cited by 523
“As this circumstance may reflect scale length rather than a lack of internal consistency (see Cortina, 1993 ), we decided to retain this measure.”
BackgroundLin, C., Morais, D. B., Kerstetter, D. L., & Hou, J.-S. (2007) · Journal of Travel Research · doi:10.1177/0047287506304049 · Cited by 554
“The lower reliability observed in the amenities factor (.67) was considered acceptable because it had a reduced number of items (i.e., three) (Cortina 1993).”
BackgroundInfluentialMetrics for explainable AI: challenges and prospects
Hoffman, R. R., Mueller, S. T., Klein, G., & Litman, J. (2018) · arXiv · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1812.04608 · Cited by 518
“…0.86; ES items had item-total correlations ranging from 0.41 to 0.76 and an average inter-item correlation of 0.71, indicative of excellent internal consistency reliability, especially for such a brief scale that is very easy to administer and score (Comrey, 1988; Cortina, 1993; Streiner, 2003).”
BackgroundInfluentialWang, C., & Hu, Q. (2017) · Technovation · doi:10.1016/j.technovation.2017.12.002 · Cited by 572
Composite Reliability in Structural Equations Modeling
Bacon, D. R., Sauer, P. L., & Young, M. A. (1995) · Educational and Psychological Measurement · doi:10.1177/0013164495055003003 · Cited by 521
Two studies of consequences and actionable antecedents of brand love
Bergkvist, L., & Bech‐Larsen, T. (2010) · Journal of Brand Management · doi:10.1057/bm.2010.6 · Cited by 509
Measuring Left-Right and Libertarian-Authoritarian Values in the British Electorate
Evans, G., Heath, A., & Lalljee, M. (1996) · British Journal of Sociology · doi:10.2307/591118 · Cited by 494
Francis, A. W., Dawson, D. L., & Golijani-Moghaddam, N. (2016) · Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science · doi:10.1016/j.jcbs.2016.05.003 · Cited by 496
Browning, M. H. E. M., Mimnaugh, K. J., van Riper, C. J., Laurent, H. K., & LaValle, S. M. (2020) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02667 · Cited by 507
“85) maintained acceptable internal consistency (Cortina, 1993).”
BackgroundInfluentialThe Concept of Personal Initiative: An Overview of Validity Studies
Fay, D., & Fresé, M. (2001) · Human Performance · doi:10.1207/s15327043hup1401_06 · Cited by 524
“This alpha is acceptable given the fact that the scale is based on only five items ( Cortina, 1993 ).”
BackgroundIntroduction to health measurement scales
Keszei, A. P., Novák, M., & Streiner, D. L. (2010) · Journal of Psychosomatic Research · doi:10.1016/j.jpsychores.2010.01.006 · Cited by 477
“α will be high if there are more than about 15 items, irrespective of the correlation among them [12], and for longer scales, other indices should be used, such as the mean interitem correlation [13].”
MethodHandbook of multimethod measurement in psychology.
Eid, M., & Diener, E. (2006) · American Psychological Association eBooks · doi:10.1037/11383-000 · Cited by 497
Wu, L., Chen, K.-Y., Chen, P.-Y., & Cheng, S. (2012) · Journal of Business Research · doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2012.09.007 · Cited by 525
Judge, T. A., Rodell, J. B., Klinger, R. L., Simon, L. S., & Crawford, E. R. (2013) · Journal of Applied Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0033901 · Cited by 482
Metadata
- Authors
- Cortina, J. M.
- Venue
- Journal of Applied Psychology
- Published
- 1993-02
- Volume
- 78
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 98-104
- ISSN
- 0021-9010 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-1854
- OpenAlex
- W2117012826
- Cited by
- 8,810
- References
- 26
- Citations by year
- 2026: 523 · 2025: 499 · 2024: 518 · 2023: 606 · 2022: 639 · 2021: 685 · 2020: 589 · 2019: 474 · 2018: 407 · 2017: 411 · 2016: 418 · 2015: 428 · 2014: 437 · 2013: 372 · 2012: 309
- FWCI
- 29.15
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Applied Psychology (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Psychometric Methodologies and Testing
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › Reliability and Agreement in Measurement
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Psychological Testing and Assessment
- Keywords
- Cronbach's alpha, internal consistency, reliability theory, scale development, test length, dimensionality
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