Reliability Analysis.

Reliability refers to the extent to which a scale produces consistent results, if the measurements are repeated a number of times. The analysis on reliability is called reliability analysis. Reliability analysis is determined by obtaining the proportion of systematic variation in a scale, which can be done by determining the association between the scores obtained from different administrations of the scale. Thus, if the association in reliability analysis is high, the scale yields consistent results and is therefore reliable. There are many software that can solve this problems. One of them is by using Minitabs Item Analysis with Cronbachs Alpha. Item Analysis tells you how well a set of questions (or items) measures one characteristic (or construct) and helps to identify questions that are problematic. For example, two questions measure different aspects of quality on a Likert scale (1 is worst, 5 is best). For the most part, respondents who rated Question 1 high also rated Question 2 high. And, those who rated Question 1 low tended to rate Question 2 low. This correlation suggests that this a reliable survey.

Item Analysis helps you to evaluate the correlation of related survey items with only a few statistics. Most important is Cronbach's alpha, a single number that tells you how well a set of items measures a single characteristic. This statistic is an overall item correlation where the values range between 0 and 1. Values above 0.7 are often considered to be acceptable. Item Analysis provides more than just a passing or failing grade; it also helps you identify problematic questions. Surveys and tests are like any other measurement tool. You first need to assess whether your data are reliable. Minitab's Item Analysis evaluates your survey responses so that you can trust your data and be confident in the decisions that you base them on. Now, let see an example on Reliability Analysis.

EXAMPLE 1.

A bank surveys customers to assess customer satisfaction. There are 10 question and 25 respondent has been asked to answer the questionnaire. The table below shows the data. Analyze using Item Analysis to determine how well all of the questions measure customer satisfaction.

Respondent 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Q1 5 4 5 4 5 4 4 5 5 4 5 5 3 5 5 4 5 3 5 4 5 3 5 4 5

Q2 5 4 4 4 5 5 4 5 4 5 4 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 4 4 4

Q3 4 4 3 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 4 3 4 4 5 2 3 3 3 4 3 3 4

Q4 5 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 4 4

Q5 4 5 5 3 4 4 5 5 4 5 4 5 4 5 3 4 5 4 5 4 4 4 3 4 4

Q6 5 4 4 4 5 5 4 5 4 5 4 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 4 4 4

Q7 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 2 3 4 5 4 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 4

Q8 5 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 5 4 5 4 5 4 3 4 4

Q9 5 4 4 4 5 5 4 5 4 5 4 5 4 4 5 4 5 4 5 5 5 5 4 4 4

Q10 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 4 5 2 3 4 1 3 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 4

Step to conduct an Item Analysis in Minitab. 1. Choose Stat > Multivariate > Item Analysis. 2. In Variables, enter all items which measure the same construct. 3. If your items are measured on different scales, checkStandardize variables. 4. Click OK.

First, key in all the data. Then, follow the above steps. We will get these results.

Cronbach's Alpha = 0.8128 Omitted Item Statistics Omitted Variable Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9 Q10 Adj. Total Mean 37.520 37.560 38.080 37.640 37.720 37.560 38.160 37.520 37.480 38.400 Adj. Total StDev 4.104 4.174 3.818 4.071 4.138 4.174 3.727 4.063 4.165 3.629 Item-Adj. Total Corr 0.3606 0.4272 0.6585 0.5676 0.3442 0.4272 0.6127 0.5501 0.4364 0.6509 Squared Multiple Corr 0.5633 1.0000 0.7569 0.8859 0.3697 1.0000 0.7759 0.8873 0.8229 0.6564 Cronbach's Alpha 0.8100 0.8039 0.7754 0.7915 0.8108 0.8039 0.7829 0.7922 0.8030 0.7790

The results show that Cronbach's alpha is quite high: 0.8128. The bank can trust that the ten questions in the survey reliably assess the same construct, customer satisfaction. So, the bank can proceed by using these ten items. But, if the bank wants to identify problematic items, look at the Omitted Item Statistics section of the output. This section tells you how removing any one item from the analysis improves or worsens Cronbach's alpha. This information allows you to fine tune your survey, keeping the good questions while replacing the bad.