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The “Belbin” team role inventory: reinterpreting reliability estimates

Stephen Swailes (Northampton Business School, University College Northampton, Northampton, UK,)
Tim McIntyre‐Bhatty (Northampton Business School, University College Northampton, Northampton, UK,)

Journal of Managerial Psychology

ISSN: 0268-3946

Article publication date: 1 September 2002

Issue publication date: 1 September 2002

15406

Abstract

Previous research into the reliability of the “Belbin” team role self‐perception inventory has concluded that internal consistency reliability is poor, raising concerns about the validity of the inventory as a selection and development tool. This paper argues that, in overcoming the problem of unequal scale lengths between respondents, researchers have tampered with the true error variance contained within item response sets, leading to a misapplication of Cronbach’s alpha in this case. Using weighted average inter‐item correlation coefficients in a formula unrelated to scale length, alternative estimates of the internal consistency reliability of the TRSPI’s scales are derived. For a large data set (n=5,003), results show that the internal consistency of item responses is better than previous research suggests and tends towards the boundary at which internal consistency is considered acceptable in social and psychological research.

Keywords

Citation

Swailes, S. and McIntyre‐Bhatty, T. (2002), "The “Belbin” team role inventory: reinterpreting reliability estimates", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 17 No. 6, pp. 529-536. https://doi.org/10.1108/02683940210439432

Publisher

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MCB UP Ltd

Copyright © 2002, MCB UP Limited

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