Assessment, Statistics, and Research

 Kurtosis is a statistical concept. The value indicates whether a distribution is similar to the normal curve or different from the normal curve. Compared to the normal curve, kurtotic distributions of data appear either peaked in the middle or flat. In a normal distribution, the value of kurtosis = 0. The peaked distribution has a positive value. It's called leptokurtic (think leap). The flatter distribution has a negative value. It's called platykurtic (think of the animal, Platypus). There are different formulas for calculating kurtosis. In Excel, the function for kurtosis can be found under Formulas, More Functions. In the drop down list, choose KURT. Please check out my website     www.suttong.com    and see my books on    AMAZON         or   GOOGLE STORE Also, consider connecting with me on     FACEBOOK     Geoff W. Sutton         TWITTER    @Geoff.W.Sutton     You can read many published articles at no charge:   Academia    Geoff W Sutton       ResearchGate   

  Scale name: Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire,   SCSRF, SCSRFQ Short form as an “Abbreviated” form, ASCSRFQ Scale overview A short easy to score measure of the strength of a person’s religious or spiritual faith. It is a available in 10-item and 5-item Likert-type scale formats. Author(s) Thomas G. Plante and Marcus T. Boccaccini introduced the 10-item version in 1997. Items: 10 and 5 for the short form   Response Type: 4-point self-report rating scale Subscales: None   Sample items 2. I pray daily. 10. My faith impacts many of my decisions. The short form uses the following 5-items: 2,4,5,8 (Plante et al., 2002). Statistics In the 1997 article, psychology students M = 26.39, SD   = 8.55, R = 33, Mdn = 26. A summary of previous studies using the 10-item version (Plante, 2010) found M = 26-33 in college samples with SD   = 6 to 8. There were no significant differences between the means of men ( M = 17.48, SD   = 2.52) and

  Coefficient Alpha (also called "alpha") is a statistical value indicating the degree of internal consistency of items in a multiple-item scale like survey items or Likert-type scales. Internal consistency is one measure of reliability for scores from scales, measures, and survey items. The alpha statistic was developed by Lee Cronbach in 1951 thus it is also called Cronbach's alpha . In research reports, you may just see the Greek lower case letter alpha,  α. The procedure to calculate alpha can be found in SPSS under Analyze > Scale > Reliabilty. For research purposes, scales with alpha levels equal to or above alpha = .70 are acceptable. The best scales have values of alpha = .9 or higher. The alpha method works best to evaluate unidimensional measures. If there are two or more dimensions in a set of items, the alpha value will be lower so, when alpha values are low, consider which item or items do not support the primary dimension. Cite this Post Sutton, G.W.