The reliability of a two-item scale: Pearson, Cronbach, or Spearman-Brown?

By Rob Eisinga, Manfred te Grotenhuis, Ben Pelzer. International Journal of Public Health, 2013

2,452 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Computer Networks and Communications, Management Science and Operations Research, Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/903ddc38e6d1d7e31ad3830ff160b94bd0cd8a64

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In Computer Networks and Communications

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Citations in the corpus

Best Split-Half and Maximum Reliability (2013, neutral): “Journal of Counseling Psychology, 34, 481-489 [7].”
Age differences in financial decision making: T he benefits of more experience and less negative emotions (2018, result): “We report the significant Pearson correlation (Table 1), which is in line with previous findings (Eisinga et al., 2013; Li et al., 2015).”
The Roles of Personality Traits, AI Anxiety, and Demographic Factors in Attitudes toward Artificial Intelligence (2022, methodology): “The use of the Spearman-Brown Correlation Coefficient was recommended to test the reliability of the instruments consisting of two items (Eisinga et al., 2013).”
The Impact of Memorable Tourism Experiences on Loyalty Behaviors: The Mediating Effects of Destination Image and Satisfaction (2018, methodology): “However, researchers (e.g., Eisinga, Grotenhuis, and Pelzer 2013) have noted that Cronbach’s α is inappropriate and meaningless for two-item scales and have thus recommended the use of the Spearman– Brown formula (i.e., 2r / 1 + r, where r is the Pearson product–moment correlation between the two…”
FIRM: An Intelligent Fine-Grained Resource Management Framework for SLO-Oriented Microservices (2020, background): “, PCC(Ti,TCP), as the measurement, and hence the resulting statistic is known as the variance explained [31].”
Teachers’ classroom management self-efficacy, perceived classroom management and teaching contexts from beginning until mid-career (2020, positive): “The Spearman Brown reliability coefficient, suited for assessing two-item scales (Eisinga, Grotenhuis, & Pelzer, 2013), showed an acceptable reliability at all waves (αs = 0.72 at wave 2; 0.75 at wave 3; 0.66 at wave 4).”