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On the Use, the Misuse, and the Very Limited Usefulness of Cronbach’s Alpha

Overview of attention for article published in Psychometrika, December 2008
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • One of the highest-scoring outputs from this source (#10 of 535)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (97th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (85th percentile)

Mentioned by

policy
2 policy sources
twitter
32 X users
facebook
1 Facebook page
wikipedia
1 Wikipedia page

Citations

dimensions_citation
1871 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
2022 Mendeley
citeulike
8 CiteULike
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Title
On the Use, the Misuse, and the Very Limited Usefulness of Cronbach’s Alpha
Published in
Psychometrika, December 2008
DOI 10.1007/s11336-008-9101-0
Pubmed ID
Authors

Klaas Sijtsma

Abstract

This discussion paper argues that both the use of Cronbach's alpha as a reliability estimate and as a measure of internal consistency suffer from major problems. First, alpha always has a value, which cannot be equal to the test score's reliability given the interitem covariance matrix and the usual assumptions about measurement error. Second, in practice, alpha is used more often as a measure of the test's internal consistency than as an estimate of reliability. However, it can be shown easily that alpha is unrelated to the internal structure of the test. It is further discussed that statistics based on a single test administration do not convey much information about the accuracy of individuals' test performance. The paper ends with a list of conclusions about the usefulness of alpha.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 32 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 2,022 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 18 <1%
Germany 11 <1%
United Kingdom 11 <1%
Spain 9 <1%
Netherlands 8 <1%
Brazil 6 <1%
Malaysia 5 <1%
Australia 4 <1%
Italy 4 <1%
Other 35 2%
Unknown 1911 95%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 461 23%
Student > Master 279 14%
Researcher 250 12%
Student > Bachelor 144 7%
Student > Doctoral Student 136 7%
Other 412 20%
Unknown 340 17%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Psychology 549 27%
Social Sciences 284 14%
Business, Management and Accounting 187 9%
Medicine and Dentistry 117 6%
Computer Science 63 3%
Other 393 19%
Unknown 429 21%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 32. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 15 September 2022.
All research outputs
#1,289,324
of 25,904,557 outputs
Outputs from Psychometrika
#10
of 535 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#4,600
of 181,643 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Psychometrika
#1
of 7 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,904,557 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 95th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 535 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 5.1. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 181,643 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 7 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than all of them