| Tag | Value |
|---|---|
| file | Reliability_vufsw-cronbach's_alpha-1140_vufsw-cronbach's_alpha-1140 |
| name | vufsw-cronbach's alpha-1140 |
| section | reliability/analysis/cronbach's alpha |
| type | schoice |
| solution | FALSE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE |
| Type | conceptual |
| Program | NA |
| Language | English |
| Level | statistical literacy |
In de Volkskrant (Dutch newspaper), an article entitled “Too good to be true” was published on 21 January 2012 about the unmasking of the Tilburg professor of social psychology Diederik Stapel by three young researchers. In this article one of them, Jesse, speaks. He describes the research he did under the supervision of Stapel. The following two exam questions consist of filling out omitted text and numbers from this section of this newspaper article.
|
Stapel would have the research carried out in three different
experiments at his famous schools. Less than a month later, Jesse had
the results. “Everything we had predicted in our hypothesis had come
true. And it was a big effect too. I thought: such nice results, that
simply cannot. It never happens to me.” Jesse decided to look for a number that scientists call ‘Cronbach’s alpha’. That number is a measure that, simply put, indicates whether the answers to a completed questionnaire are [– text 1–]. Someone who answers the question ‘Are you afraid of spinning?’ with ‘Yes’ has to answer the question ‘Do you ever have to be afraid of something’ also with ‘yes’ and it is precisely that [–text 2–] that measures the number alpha. The outcome was shocking. “Normally you would expect an alpha greater than [- number X–] in this study,” Jesse explains. ‘With an alpha lower than [- number Y–] something unacceptable is going on. And the alpha of Stapel was really ridiculously low: smaller than [- number Z–]. This can almost only indicate that the questionnaires were randomly filled in.’ It was January 2011, and Jesse had for the first time a concrete indication that the celebrated and popular professor and dean deceived the whole. “It was the only time I could not sleep,” he says. |
What is the right text to fill in?
The correct answer is : Text 1: consistent. Text 2: internal coherence