In academic essays, research papers, and theses that are quantitative and contain results related to the administration of a scale, students often have to pay attention to Cronbach’s Alpha. Cronbach’s Alpha is a measure of the interrelated of items on a scale, and, typically, Alpha needs to be ≥ 0.70 to possess internal reliability. In order to demonstrate the internal reliability of scale-based results in your own academic essay, research paper, or thesis, therefore, you should know how to calculate and report Alpha. Here, we’ll show you how to use Stata statistical software to achieve this goal.
Let’s imagine that you asked participants 8 conceptually related questions about their relationship quality. Also imagine that all of these questions are scored on the same scale, such as a 1-point Likert scale. Assuming the variable names v1 v2 v3 v4 v5 v6 v7 v8, you would calculate Cronbach’s Alpha as follows:
alpha v1 v2 v3 v4 v5 v6 v7 v8
If the items are scored on more than one scale (such as a 5-point and 7-point Likert scale), then you would use the following code to add standardization:
alpha v1 v2 v3 v4 v5 v6 v7 v8, std
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