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In real life, you will likely get a wide variety of answers, making it difficult to see if internal consistency is good or not. Sending the surveys out over different periods of time, while testing, could introduce confounding variables.Īn informal way to test for internal consistency is just to compare the answers to see if they all agree with each other. In order to test for internal consistency, you should send out the surveys at the same time. Low internal consistency means that your math test is testing something else (like arithmetic skills) instead of, or in addition to, number sense and logic. High internal consistency would tell you that the test is measuring those constructs well. Most researchers prefer to include at least two questions that measure the same thing (the above survey has three).Īnother example: you give students a math test for number sense and logic. three “agrees” or three “strongly disagrees.” If different answers are given, this is a sign that your questions are poorly worded and are not reliably measuring customer satisfaction. If the survey has good internal consistency, respondents should answer the same for each question, i.e. If I write an online review, it would be positive.
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Internal consistency reliability is a way to gauge how well a test or survey is actually measuring what you want it to measure. What is Internal Consistency Reliability?
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