What do you do if internal consistency is low?

What do you do if internal consistency is low?

If your Cronbach Alpha is low, that means some of your items are not representatives of the domain of behaviour. What you can do to improve the reliability is to remove some odd items (items less than 0.30) in the internal consistency (i.e if you have so many items) and the overall coefficient will shoot up.

What is an acceptable level of internal reliability?

A general accepted rule is that α of 0.6-0.7 indicates an acceptable level of reliability, and 0.8 or greater a very good level. However, values higher than 0.95 are not necessarily good, since they might be an indication of redundance.

Why is low reliability a problem?

In a model with two variables low reliability will attenuate the observed association (the correlation you calculate will be lower than the true population value), but in a multivariate model with more than one predictor low reliability can result in estimates of association that are too high, too low, or just about …

What is the problem with having a Cronbach’s alpha value that is too low?

A low value of alpha could be due to a low number of questions, poor inter-relatedness between items or heterogeneous constructs. For example if a low alpha is due to poor correlation between items then some should be revised or discarded.

What does it mean if internal consistency is low?

A low internal consistency means that there are items or sets of items which are not correlating well with each other. They may be measuring poorly related identities or they are not relevant in your sample/population.

How can internal consistency be improved?

Eliminate items that are poorly correlated with other items in your scale (i.e. “Number letters in your last name” item in previous example) Add highly reliable items to your scale (i.e. that correlate with existing items in your scale, but are not redundant with items already in your scale)

What is an acceptable level of reliability?

A general accepted rule is that α of 0.6-0.7 indicates an acceptable level of reliability, and 0.8 or greater a very good level. However, values higher than 0.95 are not necessarily good, since they might be an indication of redundance (Hulin, Netemeyer, and Cudeck, 2001).

How can internal consistency reliability be improved?

Here are six practical tips to help increase the reliability of your assessment:

1. Use enough questions to assess competence.
2. Have a consistent environment for participants.
3. Ensure participants are familiar with the assessment user interface.
4. If using human raters, train them well.
5. Measure reliability.