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My Current Thoughts on Coefficient Alpha and Successor Procedures

Richard J. Shavelson

Stanford University

In 1997, noting that the 50th anniversary of the publication of "Coefficient Alpha and the Internal Structure of Tests" was fast approaching, Lee Cronbach planned what have become the notes published here. His aimwas to point out theways in which his views on coefficient alpha had evolved, doubting nowthat the coefficientwas the bestway of judging the reliability of an instrument to which it was applied. Tracing in these notes, in vintage Cronbach style, his thinking before, during, and after the publication of the alpha paper, his "current thoughts" on coefficient alpha are that alpha covers only a small perspective of the range of measurement uses for which reliability information is needed and that it should be viewed within a much larger system of reliability analysis, generalizability theory.

Key Words: coefficient alpha • reliability • internal consistency • generalizability theory • variance components

Educational and Psychological Measurement, Vol. 64, No. 3, 391-418 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/0013164404266386


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