What does a Cronbach's alpha of 0.7 indicate?

A Cronbach's alpha of 0.7 is commonly regarded as indicating acceptable or good reliability for a scale or measurement instrument. This statistic measures internal consistency, reflecting how closely related a set of items are as a group. A value of 0.7 suggests that the items have a sufficiently high correlation with each other to suggest that they assess the same underlying construct, making the scale useful for research purposes or assessments.

While values higher than 0.7 are often seen as indicating better reliability (with thresholds like 0.8 or 0.9 representing excellent reliability), a score of 0.7 is still within the range that researchers consider appropriate for social sciences and other fields. Thus, it demonstrates that the measure or instrument is sufficiently reliable for practical applications, which is why it is categorized as acceptable reliability.