Coefficients Alpha, Beta, Omega, and the glb: Comments on Sijtsma

2008/12/10 by William Revelle, Richard E. Zinbarg · 14 citations
Decision Sciences · Psychology · #Psychometric Methodologies and Testing #Behavioral and Psychological Studies #Cognitive Abilities and Testing

paper · doi:10.1007/s11336-008-9102-z

Abstract

There are three fundamental problems in Sijtsma (Psychometrika, 2008): (1) contrary to the name, the glb is not the greatest lower bound of reliability but rather is systematically less than ω t (McDonald, Test theory: A unified treatment, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, 1999), (2) we agree with Sijtsma that when considering how well a test measures one concept, α is not appropriate, but recommend ω t rather than the glb, and (3) the end user needs procedures that are readily available in open source software.

Citations

• The Proof and Measurement of Association between Two Things
• Cronbach’s <i>α</i>, Revelle’s <i>β</i>, and Mcdonald’s <i>ω_H</i>: their Relations with Each Other and Two Alternative Conceptualizations of Reliability
• My Current Thoughts on Coefficient Alpha and Successor Procedures
• Coefficient Alpha and the Internal Structure of Tests
• Generalizability in Factorable Domains: "Domain Validity and Generalizability"1

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• Why We Might Still be Concerned About Low Cronbach’s Alphas in Domain-specific Knowledge Tests
• Changes in the network structure of well-being components in adolescents in the school context: A 2-year longitudinal study
• Your Coefficient Alpha Is Probably Wrong, but Which Coefficient Omega Is Right? A Tutorial on Using R to Obtain Better Reliability Estimates
• Applying Bifactor Statistical Indices in the Evaluation of Psychological Measures
• Creativity and its Criteria
• How Do Students Develop Creativity and Curiosity? The Role of Out-of-School Activities
• Reliability representativeness: How well does coefficient alpha summarize reliability across the score distribution?
• Measuring individual differences in students' knowledge about self-regulated learning strategies with a digital tool
• A Randomized Trial of the Effects of Schema-Based Instruction on Proportional Problem-Solving for Students With Mathematics Problem-Solving Difficulties
• Congeneric reliability [wikipedia]
• Cronbach's alpha [wikipedia]

Related

• My Current Thoughts on Coefficient Alpha and Successor Procedures
• Your Coefficient Alpha Is Probably Wrong, but Which Coefficient Omega Is Right? A Tutorial on Using R to Obtain Better Reliability Estimates
• Cronbach’s <i>α</i>, Revelle’s <i>β</i>, and Mcdonald’s <i>ω_H</i>: their Relations with Each Other and Two Alternative Conceptualizations of Reliability
• Starting at the Beginning: An Introduction to Coefficient Alpha and Internal Consistency
• From alpha to omega: A practical solution to the pervasive problem of internal consistency estimation