Assessing the Reliability of Attitude Scale by Cronbach’s Alpha

Abstract

Likert’s summated rating scale is often used in social science researches as an instrument to assess psychological constructs.Reliability is a vital element in the evaluation of a measurement instrument. The present article highlighted the procedureand application of Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of reliability for assessing the internal consistency of the attitude scale.The list of 54 statements indicating the attitude was prepared and sent to the 60 judges for rating on three point’s continuums. The ‘t’ values for each statement was found out and 22 statements were retained in the final scale with above1.75 ‘t’ value. The study revealed that the strong internal consistency ( = .91) among the selected items of the scale. Thestudy suggested the use of the Cronbach alpha in the social science researches is a good means to estimate the reliability coefficient of all the items and/or combination of them for the accuracy of measuring instrument.