**4.1. Reliability analysis**

Reliability is the extent to which a question yields the same responses over time, or a scale produces consistent results when repeated measurements are made [36, 40]. Any summated scale should be first analysed for reliability to ensure its appropriateness before proceeding to an assessment of its validity [41]. In this research, reliability was assessed using internal consistency analysis [36]. The earliest and simplest measure of the internal consistency of a set of data items is the split-half reliability of the scale [40, 41]. On assessing split-half reliability, the total set of items is divided into two equivalent halves—if the two scales correlate highly, they should produce similar scores [42, 43]. The total scores for the two halves are then correlated, and this is taken as the measure of the reliability of the survey [42, 43].

In practice, the approach for assessing internal consistency is the coefficient alpha (a.k.a., 'the reliability coefficient') or Cronbach's alpha popularised in a 1951 article by Cronbach based on the work in the 1940s by Guttman and others and is the most common measure of internal consistency of items in a scale [32, 36, 42, 44, 45], which is the most commonly applied estimate of a survey's reliability [40, 43]. It provides a summary measure of the inter-correlations that exist among a set of items [40, 42, 45, 46].

At the initial reliability analysis stage, Cronbach's alpha should be considered as the critical characteristic. Cronbach's alpha varies from 0 to 1 [40, 46]. The higher the correlations among the items is the greater the Cronbach's alpha values which imply that high scores on one question are associated with high scores on other questions [36]. If the value of Cronbach's alpha is low and if the item pool is sufficiently large, this suggests that some items do not equally share in the common core and should be eliminated [42]. Research also indicates that a value is considered to have very good reliability between 0.80 and 0.95, good reliability between 0.70 and 0.80, fair reliability between 0.60 and 0.70 and poor reliability below 0.60 [43].

In the test of reliability in this research, Cronbach's alpha is 0.837. The results showed strong evidence of meeting the reliability standards of exploratory research and are considered to have very good reliability.
