Lee Cronbach Research Articles

Cronbach’s Alpha: Genesis, Issues and Alternatives

The most widely used metric for assessing a scale’s reliability is Cronbach’s alpha. Since its introduction in 1951 by Lee Cronbach, it has evolved into the accepted benchmark for scale reliability. A quick search for ‘Cronbach’s alpha’ in Google Scholar yields more than 8 hundred thousand results. By any measure, this is enormous, and the usage of alpha appears to be present in practically every domain of academics. The fact that alpha has been so successful is surprising, as researchers have consistently criticised and have pointed out a plethora of problems with it. For instance, is that Cronbach never suggested alpha as a reliability metric—rather he proposed alpha as an alternative measure for equivalency in a test-retest context. Another issue Cronbach never suggested the lower bound of 0.70 as a benchmark of reliability. However, the lower bound of 0.70 has become the holy grail of scale reliability. Alpha continues to lead all measures of scale reliability despite its numerous issues. This article examines the history of alpha, its derivations based on classical test theory, and its limitations. It then suggests three alternative measures, along with software procedures to calculate them: alpha with confidence interval, omega and greatest lower bound. The purpose of this article is to enable researchers to have a better idea about the limitations of Cronbach’s alpha, and to make them aware of other measures of reliability which are available. It is hoped that this article will help researchers report better and more accurate reliability measures in their research works alongside the alpha.

Individual differences in motor skill learning: Past, present and future.

Humans vary considerably in their ability to perform and learn new motor skills. In addition, they respond to different performance and practice conditions in varying ways. Historically, experimental psychologists have characterized these differences as 'experimental noise', yet for those who embrace differential psychology, the study of individual differences promises to deepen insights into the processes that mediate motor control and learning. In this paper, we highlight what we know about predicting motor learning based on individual difference characteristics and renew a call made by Lee Cronbach several decades ago to combine the methodologies used by experimental and differential psychologists to further our understanding of how to promote motor learning. The paper provides a brief historical overview of research on individual differences and motor learning followed by a systematic review of the last 20years of research on this issue. The paper ends by highlighting some of the methodological challenges associated with conducting research on individual differences, as well as providing suggestions for future research. The study of individual differences has important implications for furthering our understanding of motor learning and when tailoring interventions for diverse learners at different stages of practice.

An Academic Genealogy of Psychometric Society Presidents

In this paper, we present the academic genealogy of presidents of the Psychometric Society by constructing a genealogical tree, in which Ph.D. students are encoded as descendants of their advisors. Results show that most of the presidents belong to five distinct lineages that can be traced to Wilhelm Wundt, James Angell, William James, Albert Michotte or Carl Friedrich Gauss. Important psychometricians Lee Cronbach and Charles Spearman play only a marginal role. The genealogy systematizes important historical knowledge that can be used to inform studies on the history of psychometrics and exposes the rich and multidisciplinary background of the Psychometric Society.

Framing psychology as a discipline (1950-1999): A large-scale term co-occurrence analysis of scientific literature in psychology.

This study investigated the structure of psychological literature as represented by a corpus of 676,393 articles in the period from 1950 to 1999. The corpus was extracted from 1,269 journals indexed by PsycINFO. The data in our analysis consisted of the relevant terms mined from the titles and abstracts of all of the articles in the corpus. Based on the co-occurrences of these terms, we developed a series of chronological visualizations using a bibliometric software tool called VOSviewer. These visualizations produced a stable structure through the 5 decades under analysis, and this structure was analyzed as a data-mined proxy for the disciplinary formation of scientific psychology in the second part of the 20th century. Considering the stable structure uncovered by our term co-occurrence analysis and its visualization, we discuss it in the context of Lee Cronbach's "Two Disciplines of Scientific Psychology" (1957) and conventional history of 20th-century psychology's disciplinary formation and history of methods. Our aim was to provide a comprehensive digital humanities perspective on the large-scale structural development of research in English-language psychology from 1950 to 1999. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

The many functions of evaluation in education

This paper focuses upon the many functions that are served by evaluations, and by the process of conducting them. Many forms or types of evaluation have evolved to serve these different functions; and a brief account is given of some of the most common of these forms and the issues or controversies that they have engendered. The discussion opens, after a brief historical note, by describing the differing views of Lee Cronbach and Michael Scriven about whether an evaluator should aim to educate stakeholders about the program so that they can make informed decisions about it, or whether evaluators should go further and make a value judgement about it. The discussion then moves on to the importance of not overlooking the unintended effects of a program that is under study; and after presenting a list of functions that evaluations can have, the remainder of the discussion deals with the “pros” and “cons” of, and the differences between, formative and summative evaluations.

Paul Newton and Stuart Shaw (eds): Validity in Educational and Psychological Assessment

A strong case can be made that the concept of validity is, or should be, at the heart of theory and practice in educational and psychological assessment. Yet, unlike the more constrained and fundamentally technical concept of reliability, consensus on an enduring definition of validity has eluded theorists since the term was coined more than a century ago. Indeed, whether validity is best described as a single, albeit multifaceted, concept or as a number of distinct, albeit related, concepts, is an issue about which predominant opinion has shifted back and forth over the decades. In their book, Paul Newton and Stuart Shaw take on the Herculean task of marshalling literature on validity theory spanning well over a century, and distilling it into a historical and theoretical analysis. They restrict themselves to an investigation of validity for (educational and psychological) measurement; they explicitly eschew delving into validity as it applies to academic discourses or to research. Following an introductory chapter, Chapters 2–5 follow the evolving history of validity from its genesis (mid-1800s–1951), its fragmentation (1952–1974), it reunification (1975–1999) and its deconstruction (2002–2012). In the sixth and final chapter, the authors argue for a framework of evaluation to be applied to assessment processes, inspired by Messick’s (1980) progressive matrix. Chapter 2 begins by noting that interest in the concept of validity rose to prominence with the tide of examinations and psychological measurement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and concludes with an account of the empirical approach of Paul Meehl and Lee Cronbach. The authors suggest that contemporary accounts of this period are often simplistic and assume greater naivety on the part of early theorists than was actually the case. They argue that, contrary to this view, by

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES: Editorial

To paraphrase Robert Benchley, there are kinds of people in this world: those who believe there are kinds of people in the world and those who think that difference is just noise. For decades, scientists who study mental processes and behavior (and the neural bases thereof) have largely been divided along these lines-those who focus on central tendencies and those who focus on the deviation from those tendencies. In his 1957 presidential address at the 65th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Lee Cronbach discussed these two historic streams of method, thought, and affiliation, which run through the last century of our science. One stream is experimental psychology; the other, correlational psychology. . . . Psychology continues to this day to be limited by the dedication of its investigators to one or the other method of inquiry rather than to scientific psychology as a whole. Of course, both types of psychology care deeply about variation among difference amounts to whether the variance is treated as data, or as noise. For the most part, experimental psychologists, including the vast majority of cognitive neuroscientists, have done the latter: differences between people (those that cannot be explained by an experimental manipulation) are banished to the denominator of the test statistic, in the realm of unexplained variance. Variability in effect size is the bane of the random effects analysis. Cognitive neuroscientists construct theories about the relation between the average brain and the average behavior. Why should they be interested in explaining individual variability? For starters, the signal-to-noise ratio is diminished when potentially explainable variance is treated as noise. Scientists interested in making inferences about the population mean might find that task easier when variance attributable to individual differences is removed from the denominator of their test statistic. In addition, in some cases the estimate of the sample mean might not actually describe anyone very well. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the mark of a theory's explanatory power is the degree to which it makes successful predictions not only about the central tendency of a population, but also about the individuals within that population. Arguments for (and examples of) an individual-differences approach to studying psychological and biological processes were collected in a recent American Psychologist article by some of the leading champions of this approach (Kosslyn, Cacioppo, Davidson, Hugdahl, Lovallo, Spiegel, and Rose, 2002). However, of the nearly 100 citations in the article, only a small fraction described individual variation in functional neuroimaging patterns. Why might this be? There are a number of myths about studying individual differences in the field of cognitive neuroscience: The cognitive process I study doesn't vary across individuals. Estimates of f MRI responses in an individual are too noisy to subject them to an individual differences analysis. …

My Current Thoughts on Coefficient Alpha and Successor Procedures

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.

Experimental Validity: Brunswik, Campbell, Cronbach, and Enduring Issues

Donald Campbell and Lee Cronbach had a long history of mutual respect for and fundamental disagreement with each other's ideas about experimental validity. Issues that Campbell labeled as external validity, Cronbach labeled internal validity. Issues that Campbell labeled internal validity, Cronbach suggested are trivial. Nevertheless, these methodological pioneers share much common ground, in part because of their alliance with Egon Brunswik. As science moved from a deterministic to a probabilistic paradigm, all 3 endeavored to protect behavioral science from validity-threatening practices that could result from naive use of the Fisherian approach to scientific investigation. This review shows that issues concerning the prioritization of types of validity still need to be resolved and that most social scientists do not understand internal validity. Several empirical practices for enhancing validity are suggested.

Statistical methods in psychology journals: Guidelines and explanations.

In the light of continuing debate over the applications of significance testing in psychology journals and following the publication of Cohen's (1994) article, the Board of Scientific Affairs (BSA) of the American Psychological Association (APA) convened a committee called the Task Force on Statistical Inference (TFSI) whose charge was elucidate some of the controversial issues surrounding applications of statistics including significance testing and its alternatives; alternative underlying models and data transformation; and newer methods made possible by powerful computers (BSA, personal communication, February 28, 1996). Robert Rosenthal, Robert Abelson, and Jacob Cohen (cochairs) met initially and agreed on the desirability of having several types of specialists on the task force: statisticians, teachers of statistics, journal editors, authors of statistics books, computer experts, and wise elders. Nineindividuals were subsequently invited to join and all agreed. These were Leona Aiken, Mark Appelbaum, Gwyneth Boodoo, David A. Kenny, Helena Kraemer, Donald Rubin, Bruce Thompson, Howard Wainer, and Leland Wilkinson. In addition, Lee Cronbach, Paul Meehl, Frederick Mosteller and John Tukey served as Senior Advisors to the Task Force and commented on written materials.

Response to Elliot W. Eisner’s “The Promise and Perils of Alternative Forms of Data Representation”

I n the August-September 1997 issue of Educational Researcher, there appeared an article by Elliot W. Eisner titled Promise and Perils of Alternative Forms of Data Representation. That article was based on an address that he had given the previous year, and he chose to the spoken (p. 4) in the article by using the first person throughout. I too would like to retain that same quality in my response. Elliot and I are former colleagues, and I offer the following in the spirit of friendly criticism. There are several arguments in his article with which I .. heartily agree, especially his advocacy of a broadened base / for what sorts of things should count as data, but there are a few others to which I take exception. In this response, I will concentrate on the latter. The first point of contention concerns Elliot's claim that Lee Cronbach raised fundamental questions about timehonored assumptions in doing (Eisner, 1997, p. 4) in his 1975 article Beyond the Two Disciplines of Scientific Psychology. The implication is that Cronbach endorsed more qualitative approaches to the advancement of knowledge. My reading of that article is different. Although he (Cronbach) may have raised fundamental questions, he did so in the context of interactions versus main effects, an issue that lies well within the realm of mainline quantitative research. The second place where I disagree with Elliot is in his claim that until quite recently discussions of qualitative research methods almost always were reduced to doing ethnography (Eisner, 1997, p. 5). I am one of those who were around then (Elliot's euphemistic term for all of us old-timers!) In reviewing my set of 25 years' worth of Educational Researcher, 1972-1997, I found that although there were discussions of ethnographic research by Lutz and Ramsey (1974), Overholt and Stallings (1976), Rist (1980), and Fetterman (1982) in the 1970s and early 1980s, there were also discussions of phenomenology, critical social theory, and other qualitative approaches. For examples, see Slavin's (1978) critique of Kerlinger's (1977) article regarding the influence of educational research on educational practice, Tanner and Tanner's (1979) concerns about William Pinar 's reconceptualist approach, Schubert's (1980) elaboration of Joseph Schwab's work, the general articles by Strike (1979), Shulman (1981), Smith (1983), Miles and Huberman (1984), and Soltis (1984) and Elliot's own excellent articles (1981,1983). A third disagreement concerns his juxtaposed sentences:

Personality and experimental psychology: The unification of psychology and the possibility of a paradigm.

It is suggested that the scientific status of psychology is put in danger by the lack of paradigms in many of its fields, and by the failure to achieve unification, psychology is breaking up into many different disciplines. One important cause was suggested by Lee Cronbach in his 1957 presidential address to the American Psychological Association: the continuing failure of the two scientific disciplines of psychology-the experimental and the correlational-to come together and mutually support each other. Personality study in particular has suffered from this disunity, and the debates about the number of major dimensions of personality illustrate the absurdity of the situation. Examples are given to show that by combining methods and theories typical of these two disciplines, one can put forward paradigms that would be impossible without such unification. Such a paradigm is suggested for personality and intelligence.

VALIDITY

ETS Research Report SeriesVolume 1987, Issue 2 p. i-208 ArticleFree Access VALIDITY Samuel Messick, Samuel Messick Acknowledgments are gratefully extended to William Angoff, Walter Emmerich, Norman Frederiksen, Harold Gulliksen, Stanford von Mayrhauser, and Michael Zieky for reviewing the manuscript; to Lee Cronbach and Robert Guion for their thorough, sometimes humbling and often mind-stretching comments on the big issues as well as important details; and, to Warren Willingham for his suggested modifications, emendations, and illustrations. Special thanks go to Ann Jungeblut for her contributions to the entire effort, from refining the ideas and honing the phrasing to sheparding the manuscript through multiple drafts. I also welcome this opportunity to acknowledge a long-standing intellectual debt to Lee Cronbach, whose seminal work on test validity has had a profound influence on my thinking about this topic, as has the work of Donald Campbell and Jane Loevinger. This chapter is dedicated: In memory of Melvin R. Novick, who devoted what proved to be the last years of his life to the development and acceptance of scientifically based standards in testing; and, In honor of Harold Gulliksen, whose prescient early paper on “Intrinsic Validity” made it clear that if you do not know what predictor and criterion scores mean, you do not know much of anything in applied measurement.Search for more papers by this author Samuel Messick, Samuel Messick Acknowledgments are gratefully extended to William Angoff, Walter Emmerich, Norman Frederiksen, Harold Gulliksen, Stanford von Mayrhauser, and Michael Zieky for reviewing the manuscript; to Lee Cronbach and Robert Guion for their thorough, sometimes humbling and often mind-stretching comments on the big issues as well as important details; and, to Warren Willingham for his suggested modifications, emendations, and illustrations. Special thanks go to Ann Jungeblut for her contributions to the entire effort, from refining the ideas and honing the phrasing to sheparding the manuscript through multiple drafts. I also welcome this opportunity to acknowledge a long-standing intellectual debt to Lee Cronbach, whose seminal work on test validity has had a profound influence on my thinking about this topic, as has the work of Donald Campbell and Jane Loevinger. This chapter is dedicated: In memory of Melvin R. Novick, who devoted what proved to be the last years of his life to the development and acceptance of scientifically based standards in testing; and, In honor of Harold Gulliksen, whose prescient early paper on “Intrinsic Validity” made it clear that if you do not know what predictor and criterion scores mean, you do not know much of anything in applied measurement.Search for more papers by this author First published: December 1987 https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2330-8516.1987.tb00244.xCitations: 40 AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume1987, Issue2December 1987Pages i-208 ReferencesRelatedInformation

Polytonal Considerations in Selected Works of Howard Swanson

Stratification by rhythmic and timbral differentiation has been demonstrated by Oily Wilson (1974) to be a prominent characteristic in both African and Afro-American music. In the companion article that appears on pp. 15-33 of this issue of BMR Journal, Lee Cronbach has shown that polytonality is another means through which layers of sound are demarcated in some African music and in gospel music, jazz, and disco music. Through examination of selected compositions by Howard Swanson, the present study proposes to expand Cronbach's thesis into the arena of concert and recital music by black composers. The primary difficulty in identifying polytonality in black concert and recital music as an Afro-American characteristic is that other styles of contemporary concert music also utilize polytonality, e.g., the compositions of persons such as Bartok, Milhaud, and Britten (Dallin, 1964, pp. 124147). However, if a given composition can be shown to contain other Afro-American traits, then it may be concluded that polytonal vertical stratification is also related to the black American musical tradition. Support is lent to this hypothesis by Georgia Ryder (1970, p. 225), who has stated that Afro-American folk songs have identifiable characteristics of melody, rhythm, and text that, in combination, set them apart from all other musics of the world (emphasis added). This view of the importance of musical elements being used in conjunction with one another as a criterion for the definition of the style is significant for the analysis of black concert and recital music.