Nonattending respondent effects on internal consistency of self-administered surveys: A Monte Carlo simulation study

This research investigated the effects of types and prevalence of response patterns that might be provided by nonattending respondents on Cronbach's a lpha. Three simulated datasets, one for each value of Cronbach's alpha .700 , .800, and .900, were constructed for 100 respondents on 50 one-to-seven L ikert items. Participants were replaced randomly in each population by one of eight response patterns at 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20% replacement levels. Eff ects were greater as a function of increased prevalence in the respondent g roup; however, as few as 5% of certain types of nonattending patterns had s trong, inflating effects on alpha.