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Dear Stefan,

You may find this article helpful for answering your question.

Schmitt, N. (1996). Uses and abuses of coefficient alpha. Psychological Assessment, 8(4), 350–353.

This chapter is also relevant.

John, O. P., & Benet-Martinez, V. (2000). Measurement: Reliability, construct validation, and scale construction. In H. T. Reis & C. M. Judd (Eds.), Handbook of Research Methods in Social and Personality Psychology (pp. 339-369). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Best,

Taya

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Taya R. Cohen, Ph.D.

Visiting Assistant Professor & Postdoctoral Fellow 

Kellogg School of Management | Northwestern University

Email: t-cohen@kellogg.northwestern.edu

Web: http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/Faculty/Directory/Cohen_Taya.aspx 

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Dear all,

we used the Gosling et al. (2003) 10-item personality inventory (TIPI) and obtained low Cronbach's alpha scores. Sam Gosling provides an explanation on his website indicating that alphas are misleading when calculated on scales with small numbers of items. I was wondering if someone could provide me with or point me to some more arguments for reviewers apart from the explanation given by Sam, in the ideal case something that has been published. I see once in a while that authors do not report alphas if they use two-item scales. What is the theoretical argument of not reporting alphas, if scales consist of only two items?

Many thanks in advance,
Stefan

-- 

Dr. Stefan Volk

Tübingen University 

Department of International Business

Melanchthonstr. 30

72074 Tübingen

Germany

Phone +49 707 129 74046

Dear all,

we used the Gosling et al. (2003) 10-item personality inventory (TIPI) and obtained low Cronbach's alpha scores. Sam Gosling provides an explanation on his website indicating that alphas are misleading when calculated on scales with small numbers of items. I was wondering if someone could provide me with or point me to some more arguments for reviewers apart from the explanation given by Sam, in the ideal case something that has been published. I see once in a while that authors do not report alphas if they use two-item scales. What is the theoretical argument of not reporting alphas, if scales consist of only two items?

Many thanks in advance,
Stefan

--  Dr. Stefan Volk  Tübingen University  Department of International Business Melanchthonstr. 30 72074 Tübingen Germany  Phone +49 707 129 74046  

Dear all,

we used the Gosling et al. (2003) 10-item personality inventory (TIPI) and obtained low Cronbach's alpha scores. Sam Gosling provides an explanation on his website indicating that alphas are misleading when calculated on scales with small numbers of items. I was wondering if someone could provide me with or point me to some more arguments for reviewers apart from the explanation given by Sam, in the ideal case something that has been published. I see once in a while that authors do not report alphas if they use two-item scales. What is the theoretical argument of not reporting alphas, if scales consist of only two items?

Many thanks in advance,
Stefan

--  Dr. Stefan Volk  Tübingen University  Department of International Business Melanchthonstr. 30 72074 Tübingen Germany  Phone +49 707 129 74046  

Stefan,

My colleagues and I recently published an article in PAID evaluating the TIPI relative to a 50-item measure from the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP).  The results on the whole were actually more positive than we had expected, although the alphas were generally low.  We didn't have the space to explore the issue in much depth, but we did briefly touch on it at the end of the the Discussion section.  Here's the citation:

Ehrhart, M. G., Ehrhart, K. H., Roesch, S. C., Chung-Herrera, B. G., Nadler, K., & Bradshaw, K. (2009).  Testing the latent factor structure and construct validity of the Ten-Item Personality Inventory.  Personality and Individual Differences, 47, 900-905.

Regards,

Mark

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 5:33 AM, Stefan Volk <stefan.volk@uni-tuebingen.de> wrote:

Dear all,

we used the Gosling et al. (2003) 10-item personality inventory (TIPI) and obtained low Cronbach's alpha scores. Sam Gosling provides an explanation on his website indicating that alphas are misleading when calculated on scales with small numbers of items. I was wondering if someone could provide me with or point me to some more arguments for reviewers apart from the explanation given by Sam, in the ideal case something that has been published. I see once in a while that authors do not report alphas if they use two-item scales. What is the theoretical argument of not reporting alphas, if scales consist of only two items?

Many thanks in advance,
Stefan

  --  Dr. Stefan Volk  Tübingen University  Department of International Business Melanchthonstr. 30 72074 Tübingen Germany  Phone +49 707 129 74046  

--
Mark Ehrhart, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
San Diego State University
5500 Campanile Drive
San Diego, CA  92182-4611
619-594-4439 (phone)
619-594-1332 (fax)
mehrhart@sunstroke.sdsu.edu