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ERIC Number: EJ1263670
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020-Oct
Pages: 22
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0013-1644
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
The Role of Item Distributions on Reliability Estimation: The Case of Cronbach's Coefficient Alpha
Olvera Astivia, Oscar Lorenzo; Kroc, Edward; Zumbo, Bruno D.
Educational and Psychological Measurement, v80 n5 p825-846 Oct 2020
Simulations concerning the distributional assumptions of coefficient alpha are contradictory. To provide a more principled theoretical framework, this article relies on the Fréchet-Hoeffding bounds, in order to showcase that the distribution of the items play a role on the estimation of correlations and covariances. More specifically, these bounds restrict the theoretical correlation range [-1, 1] such that certain correlation structures may be unfeasible. The direct implication of this result is that coefficient alpha is bounded above depending on the shape of the distributions. A general form of the Fréchet-Hoeffding bounds is derived for discrete random variables. R code and a user-friendly shiny web application are also provided so that researchers can calculate the bounds on their data.
SAGE Publications. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Tel: 800-818-7243; Tel: 805-499-9774; Fax: 800-583-2665; e-mail: journals@sagepub.com; Web site: http://sagepub.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A