Cronbach's Alpha: A Cornerstone in Ensuring Reliability and Validity in Environmental Health Assessment

Abstract

Cronbach's alpha (CA) presents significant potential in environmental health assessment. This metric plays a crucial role in ensuring the reliability of measurement instruments, guaranteeing that they consistently capture the intended constructs across various situations and over time. This review centres on exploring the capabilities of measures of internal consistency, particularly CA, in the context of environmental health assessment. The findings underscore the indispensability of CA in environmental health, especially in situations involving high-stakes decisions. This emphasizes the importance of assessment tools, reinforcing their reliability and validity. In environmental health studies, CA emerges as highly promising, particularly in the evaluation of pollution using indices. Its indication of strong internal consistency significantly contributes to the construct validity of environmental health assessment tools. Furthermore, the use of CA ensures data reliability, informs sound decision-making, and enhances the overall effectiveness of research in this vital field. Therefore, its adoption and application in tools commonly employed for assessing environmental and human health risks related to toxicants are deemed necessary for ensuring the robustness of the assessment process. Enhancing these processes involves incorporating factor analysis and considering sample size. However, caution should be exercised to avoid drawbacks, such as the assumption of unidimensionality.