Use Omega Rather than Cronbach’s Alpha for Estimating Reliability. But…

Cronbach’s alpha (α) is a widely-used measure of reliability used to quantify the amount of random measurement error that exists in a sum score or average generated by a multi-item measurement scale. Yet methodologists have warned that α is not an optimal measure of reliability relative to its more general form, McDonald’s omega (ω). Among other reasons, that the computation of ω is not available as an option in many popular statistics programs and requires items loadings from a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) have probably hindered more widespread adoption. After a bit of discussion of α versus ω, we illustrate the computation of ω using two structural equation modeling programs (Mplus and AMOS) and the MBESS package for R. We then describe a macro for SPSS and SAS (OMEGA) that calculates ω in two ways without relying on the estimation of loadings or error variances using CFA. We show that it produces estimates of ω that are nearly identical to when using CFA-based estimates of item loadings and error variances. We also discuss the use of the OMEGA macro for certain forms of item analysis and brief form construction based on the removal of items from a longer scale.