Scale Reliabilities

NSSE 2023 Scale Reliabilities (Cronbach's Alpha)

NSSE routinely reports scale scores for the ten Engagement Indicators and often presents analyses for the Sense of Belonging and Perceived Gains scales. Cronbach's alpha—a widely-used measure of internal consistency—estimates how closely related a set of items are as a group. It is essentially the average intercorrelation among the items.

Keep in mind that higher values for alpha do not imply that the measure is unidimensional. For more information on that type of analysis, see the NSSE Construct Validity Study.

Scale reliabilities are listed in Table 1 by class level. Alphas range between .77 and .92, well within an acceptable range for most researchers (McMillan & Schumacher, 2001). The data include nearly 115,000 first-year students and over 125,000 seniors attending 456 institutions from the NSSE 2023 administration.

Table 1. NSSE 2023 Scale Reliabilities

Engagement Indicator	N of Items	First-Year	Senior
Higher-Order Learning	4	.84	.85
Reflective & Integrative Learning	7	.85	.87
Learning Strategies	3	.77	.78
Quantitative Reasoning	3	.83	.85
Collaborative Learning	4	.84	.84
Discussions with Diverse Others	4	.88	.89
Student-Faculty Interaction	4	.83	.85
Effective Teaching Practices	5	.84	.86
Quality of Interactions	5	.85	.84
Supportive Environment	8	.88	.89

Other Scales	N of Items	First-Year	Senior
Sense of Belonging	3	.85	.85
Perceived Gains	10	.91	.92

Reference

McMillan, J. H., & Schumacher, S. (2001). Research in education: A conceptual introduction. Longman.

Scale Reliabilities

NSSE 2023 Scale Reliabilities (Cronbach's Alpha)

Table 1. NSSE 2023 Scale Reliabilities

Engagement Indicators

Other Scales

Reference

Evidence-Based Improvement in Higher Education resources and social media channels