A Cronbach's alpha analysis was conducted on a sample of 110 participants to analyze the internal consistency of items measuring a living standards construct. The analysis found a Cronbach's alpha of 0.571, indicating low reliability. Examination of the Cronbach's alpha if items were deleted showed that one item, Japan111, had a very low corrected item-total correlation and could be removed. Even with its removal, the overall reliability of the scale would remain low. Low Cronbach's alpha can be due to factors such as a small number of items, poor interrelatedness between items, or measuring heterogeneous constructs. When alpha is low, items with low inter-correlations should be revised or removed.

1. Sample Cronbach Analysis
using Kara.sav
Aiden Yeh
Wenzao Ursuline University

2. Follow the highlighted texts

3. Living Standard Category
(Construct)

4. Click ‘Statistics’, choose ‘item,
scale, scale if deleted, and
correlations
• Click
continue,
• then click ‘ok’
to produce
output

5. • Pretty low
Cronbach
alpha of .
571 for this
sample size
of 110
(N=110)

6. Look at the "Cronbach's Alpha if
Item Deleted"
• Corrected item-total correlation for
Japan111 is very, very low at .081, which
means you may remove this item
• Nonetheless, your reliability factor for this
scale is still very poor

7. • A low value of alpha could be due to a low
number of questions, poor
interrelatedness 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.
• items with low correlations (approaching
zero) are deleted.

8. • A reliability of .5 means that about half of
the variance of the observed score is
attributable to truth and half is attributable
to error.
• Low Cronbach's alpha also means that a
group of people did not respond to that set
of items consistently

9. • In a case where the [internal consistency]
reliability is somewhat low, you may still
want to sum the scores (count/frequency)

10. • In a case where the [internal consistency]
reliability is somewhat low, you may still
want to sum the scores (count/frequency)