Statistical Details for Cronbach’s α

The statistic used in the Item Reliability option in the Multivariate red triangle menu is Cronbach’s α. Cronbach’s α is defined as follows:

where

k = the number of items in the scale

c = the average covariance between items

v = the average variance between items

If the items are standardized to have a constant variance, the formula becomes

where

r = the average correlation between items

The larger the overall α coefficient, the more confident you can feel that your items contribute to a reliable scale or test. The coefficient can approach 1.0 if you have many highly correlated items.

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