Lee Joseph Cronbach: Biography Of This Psychologist
It is difficult, or even impossible, to carry out research in Psychology without the influence of Lee Cronbach
He is an essential author for understanding Psychology as it is today, and without a doubt one of the most influential academics of the last century.
His numerous contributions to the knowledge of science have a transversal character, since he dedicated himself to epistemological reflection and the definition of a method with which to enhance the rigor of the scientific findings that could be derived from this discipline.
In the following lines we will delve into the life of the author through a brief biography of Lee Joseph Cronbach although stopping at what were some of his most important contributions.
Academic career
Lee Joseph Cronbach was a psychologist of American origin who made numerous contributions to the field of Psychometrics and education, among which Cronbach’s alpha index stands out (widely used today in order to determine the reliability of an evaluation tool). quantitative).
Lee Cronbach was born in the city of Fresno in 1916, and there he would obtain his university degree (Bachelor of Arts, 1934), later completing his Master’s training in Berkeley and his Doctorate in Chicago (Educational Psychology, 1937). Throughout his career, showed interest in the methodological rigor of the studies that were published from the framework of Psychology so he proposed important tools to strengthen it.
As a teacher he provided training in many universities in his country; especially in Chicago, Illinois and Stanford (where he remained a large part of his life as an academic). In recognition of his extensive contributions, Lee Cronbach was named president of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1957 and of one of its divisions (Evaluation and Measurement), as well as of the American Educational Research Association itself in 1964.
In addition to his contribution to psychological evaluation, he carried out great work in the field of instruction. During the 70s He had the opportunity to be director of the Stanford Evaluation Consortium ; an organization aimed at research and training that depended on the Psychology departments and that designed extensive projects to improve coordination between educational centers in the districts that make up the State of California.
Cronbach’s research, likewise, was relevant in clinical and community settings. Developed programs for health and child and youth crime , emphasizing extraordinary rigor in their work and making visible the importance of social and political reality in their planning and development. With these contributions he substantially improved the way in which research was carried out in the social, health and educational fields.
Lee Cronbach died in 2001 from congestive heart disease, leaving for posterity an imperishable intellectual legacy for Psychometrics, Educational Psychology and Epistemology Not in vain, he is one of the authors who has the greatest number of references in scientific articles from around the world.
Theoretical and epistemological principles
The variety of studies in which the author’s work is used exemplifies very well one of the postulates on which it would be based, which is none other than the existence of two independent but firmly related Psychologies: one of an experimental nature (which requires manipulation in the laboratory to observe causes/consequences with absolute control of the situation) and another correlational one (through which the way in which two variables interact with each other in less restrictive environments could be observed).
Lee Cronbach’s vision of Psychology aspired to the formulation of essential laws that could become widely applicable and generalization, in a similar way to what happens with physics or chemistry. He considered that it was possible to dissect the associations that occur in human phenomena in order to establish a posteriori causal relationships that, even based on the laws of probability, would bring his object of study closer to the positivist rigor of other disciplines.
Thus, he understood human behavior and thought as realities imbued in nature, and therefore subject to the same explanatory principles that the natural sciences possess. These sought to establish certain regularities among the phenomena under study, with a special sensitivity to the probability of error that is inherent to their complexity, but developing universal principles on which to support a useful and reproducible corpus of knowledge.
Lee Cronbach was able to recognize that the purpose of Psychology should not be limited to the experimental reproduction of laboratory conditions to test assumptions of a nomothetic nature (applicable to all subjects in their capacity as particles extracted from a group), but should contemplate the phenomena that unfold in everyday environments. In this sense, aspired to the unification of the two psychologies that he himself distinguished in an attempt at syncretism that would turn out to be paradigmatic.
Lee Cronbach’s reflections on this issue led him to affirm that the reduction of psychic phenomena that occurs in experimental situations could not provide a precise answer to the problems of human beings, whose life is debated in the permanent flow of interactions with a multiplicity of variables, among which the basic sociocultural coordinates and the substrate of the scenario in which their daily life unfolds would be highlighted.
In conclusion, I would point out that the observation of phenomena (with a mind devoid of prejudices and open to fascination) is key to establishing knowledge of sufficient magnitude to be comparable to that of Physics or Chemistry Regarding the latter, I would remember that they are not free of uncertainty either, since the macro and microphysical world assumes a virtually infinite number of variables for its formulations).
Contributions as a methodologist
Lee Cronbach’s vision of Psychology was a historical milestone, showing the desire for positivist comparison with other sciences from a perspective that embraced reason and avoided all naivety. However, the contribution for which he remains such a remembered author today was its famous Cronbach’s alpha, a measure inserted within G Theory (or Generalizability Theory) with which the Classical Test Theory was expanded.
Classical Test Theory contemplates that every score (empirical value) that a subject obtains in tests designed to measure a psychological construct is made up of his or her actual score plus the random error (this being the difference observed when subtracting the empirical score and the real one). ). This error can occur as a result of methodological deficiencies, or even circumstances such as the place where the measurement is carried out or the personal situation of the evaluator.
Theory G would be complementary to Classical Test Theory This would aim to quantify the reliability of a test through the determination of all sources of error, guaranteeing a more precise decision-making process. And this process occupied a notable part of the author’s academic life, for which he suggested methods coming directly from statistics.
In this context, Cronbach’s alpha would rise as one of the statistics designed to assess the internal consistency or reliability of a measurement tool (or the factors that make it up). Although the concept was introduced by Cyril J. Hoyt (a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Minnesota) and Louis Guttman (mathematician and sociologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) some years earlier; It was Cronbach who was finally able to popularize it, reformulate it, and spread it to the scientific community to a greater extent.
Every time a researcher attempts to measure an attribute, You have to consider the fact that this is never directly quantifiable , but its assessment must be carried out through a process of abstraction that adjusts to the theoretical model from which it comes. The common thing is that it ends up being carried out through the administration of a questionnaire, whose items are subsumed as second-order factors (depression or anxiety, for example).
To evaluate how precise the measurement is and explores with minimal margin of error what it actually claims to measure, Cronbach’s alpha is used. Is about the weighted average of the variances or correlations between the items that make up the factor obtaining from its use a score that ranges between 0 and 1 (0.70 being the cut-off point from which the test can be considered reliable and used for assessment purposes in any field of Psychology).
An evaluation at the service of society
Psychological evaluation, for Cronbach, was inextricably linked to social policies, and should be subject to the needs of the people in their context. aspiration to achieve a state of justice and plurality He understood that although political influences were inevitable, it was necessary that there be a process of adaptation between these and social programs that was based on sensitivity to needs through a flexible approach to the object of study.
Due to this vision, he postulated an evaluative planning that could accommodate the enormous diversity to which each potential investigation was subject, which included two stages: the convergent and the divergent. In the first, the possible variables that could be explored were extracted, while in the second, a hierarchy of priorities for the study was established.
Finally, the same author considered that the interpretation of results was a second stage in their evaluation, in which Some information could be lost due to the subjectivity of the evaluator That is why he considered essential structured training aimed at selecting appropriate questions and directing the process to action, that is, towards decision-making in which the improvement of the lives of the people or institutions evaluated would be prioritized.
