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Internal Consistency of Tests: Analyses Old and New

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Lee J. Cronbach
Lee J. Cronbach*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
*
Requests for reprints should be sent to Lee J. Cronbach, Center for the Study of Youth Development, Building 460, Stanford University, CA 94305.
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Abstract

A coefficient derived from communalities of test parts has been proposed as greatest lower bound to Guttman's “immediate retest reliability.” The communalities have at times been calculated from covariances between item sets, which tends to underestimate appreciably. When items are experimentally independent, a consistent estimate of the greatest defensible internal-consistency coefficient is obtained by factoring item covariances. In samples of modest size, this analysis capitalizes on chance; an estimate subject to less upward bias is suggested. For estimating alternate-forms reliability, communality-based coefficients are less appropriate than stratified alpha.

Keywords

communalityinternal-consistencyreliability
Type
Original Paper
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , March 1988 , pp. 63 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 The Psychometric Society

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Footnotes

I thank Edward Haertel for comments and suggestions, and Andrew Comrey for data.

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