Dear Colleagues,

 

I'm working on a Delphi study comparing perceptions of high school
technology teachers and university engineering educators about the
importance of concepts about engineering for HS students to learn as part of
their fundamental education. I'm actually doing this as part of my Ph.D.

The survey items (n=37) are categorized into five scales: design, human
values, modeling, resources, and systems thinking. I'm seeking to determine
the reliability of these scales and of the overall survey instrument. Since
I'm working with ordinal data, Chronbach's Alpha probably isn't the best
statistical tool to use.

 

I've literally spent several days learning my way around R-project but am
struggling with procedures and interpretations. 

 

I'm aware that there is now a plug-in for R for SPSS that can be downloaded
( <http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21477550>
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21477550 and
<http://gruener.userpage.fu-berlin.de/Essentials%20for%20R%20Installation%20
Instructions_21.pdf>
http://gruener.userpage.fu-berlin.de/Essentials%20for%20R%20Installation%20I
nstructions_21.pdf). Just learned that today and I downloaded
PolyCorrelations.zip from
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/files/app?lang=en#/file/9f47f9a
0-7793-4ad5-8bb7-d3fd1a028e44 

 

I've gotten as far as loading Rcmdr and running some analyses - (Statistics,
dimensional analysis, scale reliability) and I've generated this output:

 

Reliability deleting each item in turn:

                        Alpha   Std.Alpha   r(item, total)

design              0.8445    0.8490         0.7629

humanvalues   0.8526    0.8541         0.7170

modeling          0.8511    0.8546         0.7271

resources        0.8712    0.8757         0.6328

systems           0.8461    0.8498         0.7488

 

I now would sincerely appreciate some help. At the age of 70, never having
studied programming, the meaning of these statistics is not apparent.

For example, I'm not clear if either of these three statistics are Ordinal
Alpha. Since I'm working with Likert scale items, my advisor suggested that
I seek an alternative to Chronbach's Alpha to determine reliability.

 

So far, here are the steps I have taken:

I've searched the FAQs

Searched specifically for answers on the Web

Played with the software for hours

Read the accompanying documentation.

Downloaded and installed Rcmdr

Downloaded and installed PolyCorrelations. 

 

I tried running PolyCorrelations  but I get a message that states that this
requires the Polychor and Gclus libraries. I tried to install them into the
R console, but no luck. 

 

I'd also be pleased to work with someone-on-one on a consulting basis if
someone has the time and inclination.  Hoping to find an individual who
knows SPSS and R.

 

Thanks very sincerely for considering this request.

 

Michael

 

 

-------------------------------- 

END OF MESSAGE  

-------------------------------- 

Michael Hacker, Co-Director

Hofstra University Center for STEM Education Research

Ph: 518-724-6437

Cell: 518-229-7300

Fax: 518-434-6783

URL: www.Hofstra.edu/CSR

 


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