ERIC Number: EJ1195700
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2018-Sep
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0021-9584
EISSN: N/A
Moving beyond Alpha: A Primer on Alternative Sources of Single-Administration Reliability Evidence for Quantitative Chemistry Education
Journal of Chemical Education, v95 n9 p1477-1491 Sep 2018
This methodological paper examines current conceptions of reliability in chemistry education research (CER) and provides recommendations for moving beyond the current reliance on reporting coefficient alpha (a) as reliability evidence without regard to its appropriateness for the research context. To help foster a better understanding of reliability and the assumptions that underlie reliability coefficients, reliability is first described from a conceptual framework, drawing on examples from measurement in the physical sciences; then classical test theory is used to frame a discussion of how reliability evidence for psychometric measurements is commonly examined in CER, primarily in the form of single-administration reliability coefficients. Following this more conceptual introduction to reliability, the paper transitions to a more mathematical treatment of reliability using a factor analysis framework with emphasis on the assumptions underlying coefficient alpha and other single-administration reliability coefficients, such as omega (?) and coefficient H, which are recommended as successors to alpha in CER due to their more broad applicability to a variety of factor models. The factor analysis-based reliability discussion is accompanied by R code that demonstrates the mathematical relations underlying single-administration reliability coefficients and provides interested readers the opportunity to compute coefficients beyond alpha for their own data.
Descriptors: Chemistry, Science Instruction, Teaching Methods, Reliability, Factor Analysis, Item Response Theory, Psychometrics, Evidence, Computation
Division of Chemical Education, Inc. and ACS Publications Division of the American Chemical Society. 1155 Sixteenth Street NW, Washington, DC 20036. Tel: 800-227-5558; Tel: 202-872-4600; e-mail: eic@jce.acs.org; Web site: http://pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A