Several Measures of Reliability

This chapter demonstrates how to perform and interpret several of the methods for computing measurement reliability. It is important to assess the reliability of your data prior to conducting inferential statistics. If your reliability tests indicate that your data have low reliability, the results from inferential testing become suspect. Using existing measures with established reliability can help to increase the chances that your new data will be reliable. Regardless, it is important to assess the level of reliability of your dataset, particularly if your sample differs in some way from the standardization sample for an established measure. Per APA guidelines, reliability indices should be reported for all data. Indeed, most journal editors and reviewers require reliability to be reported in the method section of published articles. This chapter enables readers to conduct the analyses that they need to report.