The Kuder and Richardson Formula 20 test checks the internal consistency of measurements with dichotomous choices. It is equivalent to performing the split half methodology on all combinations of questions and is applicable when each question is either right or wrong. A correct question scores 1 and an incorrect question scores 0. The test statistic is
k = number of questions
pj = number of people in the sample who answered question j correctly
qj = number of people in the sample who didn’t answer question j correctly
σ2 = variance of the total scores of all the people taking the test = VARP(R1) where R1 = array containing the total scores of all the people taking the test.
Values range from 0 to 1. A high value indicates reliability, while too high a value (in excess of .90) indicates a homogeneous test.
Example 1: A questionnaire with 11 questions is administered to 12 students. The results are listed in the upper portion of Figure 1. Determine the reliability of the questionnaire using Kuder and Richardson Formula 20.
The values of p in row 18 are the percentage of students who answered that question correctly – e.g. the formula in cell B18 is =B16/COUNT(B4:B15). The values of q in row 19 are the percentage of students who answered that question incorrectly – e.g. the formula in cell B19 is =1–B18. The values of pq are simply the product of the p and q values, with the sum given in cell M20.
We can calculate ρKR20 as described in Figure 2.
Figure 2 – Key formulas for worksheet in Figure 1
The value ρKR20 = 0.738 shows that the test has high reliability.
Real Statistics Function: The Real Statistics Resource Pack contains the following supplemental function:
KUDER(R1) = KR20 coefficient for the data in range R1.
Observation: For Example 1, KUDER(B4:L15) = .738.
Observation: Where the questions in a test all have approximately the same difficulty (i.e. the mean score of each question is approximately equal to the mean score of all the questions), then a simplified version of Kuder and Richardson Formula 20 is Kuder and Richardson Formula 21, defined as follows:
where μ is the population mean score (obviously approximated by the observed mean score).
For Example 1, μ = 69/12 = 5.75, and so
Note that ρKR21 typically underestimates the reliability of a test compared to ρKR20 .