Reliability generalisation is a type of meta-analysis. However, rather than deriving an estimate of an overall effect size for an intervention it provides an estimate of the internal consistency of a questionnaire, test or survey. Along with validity and responsiveness to change, internal consistency (or internal reliability) is one of the important psychometric properties of a test, and may be thought of as how well the individual items or questions included in the instrument correlate with each other. This degree of correlation can, for instance, be expressed as a Cronbach’s alpha statistic. Reliability generalisation may be used to produce an estimate of internal consistency of a test from Cronbach’s alpha statistics pooled from different studies.
How to cite: Reliability Generalisation [online]. (2016). York; York Health Economics Consortium; 2016. https://yhec.co.uk/glossary/reliability-generalisation/